\ 


WILLIAM   LLOYD 
GARRISON 


BY 

JOHN  JAY  CHAPMAN 


FRONTISPIECE 


NEW  YORK 
MOFFAT,  YARD   AND  COMPANY 

1913 


- 

.  Gr3 


COPYRIGHT,  1913,  BY 
JOHN  JAY  CHAPMAN 


Reserved 


WILLIAM    LLOYD   GARRISON 


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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    INTRODUCTION .1 

II    THE  BACKGROUND 8 

III  THE  'FIGURE 33 

IV  PICTURES  OF  THE  STRUGGLE     .     .  58 
V    THE  CRISIS 96 

VI    RETROSPECT  AND  PROSPECT     .     .133 

VII     THE  MAN  OF  ACTION   ....   187 

VIII     THE  RYNDERS  MOB      ....   198 

IX     GARRISON  AND  EMERSON  .     .      .218 

X    FOREIGN     INFLUENCE  :  SUMMARY  240 

EPILOGUE 263 


267385 


WILLIAM   LLOYD 
GARRISON 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  periods  of  history  that  are  most  inter 
esting  are  those  which  have  been  lighted  up 
by  spiritual  bonfires.  As  we  read  about 
such  epochs  we  seem  to  feel  the  fires  re 
kindling  in  our  bosom.  Through  the  iden 
tity  of  those  historic  flames  with  our  own,  we 
become  aware  of  our  portion  in  the  past,  and 
of  our  mission  in  the  present.  The  names 
of  the  actors,  to  be  sure,  are  changed;  the 
names  of  the  forces  at  work  vary  con 
tinually.  Yet  the  substance  of  the  story  is 
ever  the  same ;  the  fable  deals  with  ourselves. 
And  therefore  that  fable  stirs  the  intimate 
embers  in  us.  Here,  within  us,  are  those 
smothered  and  banked  furnaces  which  the 
stride  of  History  has  left  behind  it, —  the 
only  now  living  part,  the  only  real  part  and 
absolute  remnant  of  the  divine  pageant. 
There  are  some  periods  of  great  confla- 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

gration  where  a  whole  epoch  is  lighted  up 
with  one  great  flame  of  idea,  which  takes 
perhaps  a  few  decades  to  arise,  blaze,  and 
fall;  during  which  time  it  shows  all  men  in 
its  glare.  Willy  nilly  they  can  be  and  are 
seen  by  this  light  and  by  no  other.  Willy 
nilly  their  chief  interest  for  the  future  lies 
in  their  relation  to  this  idea.  In  spite  of 
themselves  they  are  thrilling,  illustrative 
figures,  seen  in  lurid  and  logical  distortion, 
— 'abstracts  and  epitomes  of  human  life. 
Nay,  they  stand  forever  as  creatures  that 
have  been  caught  and  held,  cracked  open, 
thrown  living  upon  ^  a  screen,  burned  alive 
perhaps  by  a  searching  and  terrible  bonfire 
and  recorded  in  the  act, — as  the  citizens  of 
Pompeii  were  recorded  by  the  eruption  of 
Mount  Vesuvius. 

It  happened  that  a  period  of  this  kind 
passed  over  the  United  States  between  the 
years  1830  and  1865.  There  is  nothing  to 
be  found  in  that  epoch  which  does  not  draw 
its  significance,  its  interest,  its  permanent 
power  from  the  slavery  question.  There 
is  no  man  whose  life  falls  within  that  epoch 
whose  character  was  not  controlled  by  that 
question,  or  whose  portrait  can  be  seen  by 
any  other  light  than  the  light  of  that  lire. 
Subtract  that  light  and  you  have  darkness; 


INTRODUCTION 

you  cannot  see  the  man  at  all.  In  the  biog 
raphies  of  certain  distinguished  conserva 
tives  of  that  time  you  may  often  observe 
the  softening  of  the  portrait  by  the  omission 
of  unpleasant  records,  the  omission  by  the 
biographers  of  those  test  judgments  and 
test  ordeals  with  which  the  times  were  well 
supplied.  By  these  omissions  the  man  van 
ishes  from  the  page  of  his  own  book.  The 
page  grows  suddenly  blank.  You  check 
yourself  and  wonder  who  it  was  that  you 
were  reading  about.  Now  the  reason  of 
this  disappearance  of  the  leading  character 
from  your  mind  is  that  the  biographer  has 
drawn  someone  who  could  not  have  existed. 
The  man  must  have  answered  aye  or  nay 
to  the  question  which  the  times  were  put 
ting.  And,  in  fact,  he  did  so  answer.  By 
this  answer  he  could  have  been  seen.  With 
out  it  he  does  not  exist. 

I  confess  that  I  had  rather  stand  out  for 
posterity  in  a  hideous  silhouette,  as  having 
been  wrrong  on  every  question  of  my  time, 
than  be  erased  into  a  cypher  by  my  biog 
rapher.  But  biographers  do  not  feel  in  this 
way  toward  their  heroes.  Each  one  feels 
that  he  has  undertaken  to  do  his  best  by  his 
patron.  Therefore  they  stand  the  man  un 
der  a  north  light  in  a  photographer's  attic, 
3 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

suggest  his  attitude,  and  thus  take  the  pic 
ture; —  whereas,  in  real  life,  the  man  was 
standing  on  the  balcony  of  a  burning  build 
ing  which  the  next  moment  collapsed,  and 
in  it  he  was  crushed  beyond  the  semblance 
of  humanity.  The  Civil  War, —  that  war 
with  its  years  of  interminable  length,  its 
battles  of  such  successive  and  monstrous 
carnage,  its  dragged-out  reiterations  of  hor 
ror  and  agony,  and  its  even  worse  tortures 
of  hope  deferred, —  hope  all  but  extinct, — 
that  war  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  read 
even  a  summary  without  becoming  so  worn 
out  by  distress  that  you  forget  everything 
that  went  before  in  the  country's  history 
and  emerge,  as  it  were,  a  new  man  at  the 
close  of  your  perusal ;  —  that  war  was  no  ac 
cident.  It  was  involved  in  every  syllable 
which  every  inhabitant  of  America  uttered 
or  neglected  to  utter  in  regard  to  the  slavery 
question  between  1830  and  1860.  The 
gathering  and  coming  on  of  that  war,  its 
vaporous  distillation  from  the  breath  of 
every  man,  its  slow,  inevitable  formation  in 
the  sky,  its  retreats  and  apparent  dispersals, 
its  renewed  visibilities, —  all  of  them  gov 
erned  by  some  inscrutable  logic, —  and  its 
final  descent  in  lightning  and  deluge ;  —  these 
matters  make  the  history  of  the  interval  be- 

4 


INTRODUCTION 

tween  1830  and  1865.  That  history  is  all 
one  galvanic  throb,  one  course  of  human 
passion,  one  Nemesis,  one  deliverance. 
And  with  the  assassination  of  Lincoln  in 
1865  there  falls  from  on  high  the  great,  uni 
fying  stroke  that  leaves  the  tragedy  sublime. 
No  poet  ever  invented  such  a  scheme  of 
curse,  so  all-involving,  so  remotely  rising  in 
an  obscure  past  and  holding  an  entire  nation 
in  its  mysterious  bondage, —  a  scheme  based 
on  natural  law,  led  forward  and  unfolded 
from  mood  to  mood,  from  climax  to  climax, 
and  plunging  at  the  close  into  the  depths  of 
a  fathomless  pity.  The  action  of  the  drama 
is  upon  such  a  scale  that  a  quarter  of  the 
earth  has  to  be  devoted  to  it.  Yet  the  argu 
ment  is  so  trite  that  it  will  hardly  bear  state 
ment.  Perhaps  the  true  way  to  view  the 
whole  matter  is  to  regard  it  as  the  throwing 
off  by  healthy  morality  of 'a  little  piece  of 
left  over  wickedness, —  that  bad  heritage  of 
antiquity,  domestic  slavery.  The  logical  and 
awful  steps  by  which  the  process  went  for 
ward  merely  exhibit  familiar,  moral,  and 
poetic  truth.  What  else  could  they  exhibit? 
We  are  ungrateful  to  the  intellects  of  the 
past;  or  rather,  like  children  we  take  it  for 
granted  that  somebody  must  supply  us  with 
our  supper  and  our  ideas ;  and,  for  the  most 
5 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

part,  it  is  difficult  to  discover  the  extent  of 
our  indebtedness,  whether,  for  example,  to 
Charlemagne  or  to  the  scholars  who  have  re 
vealed  him.  Yet  everything  we  know  and 
live  by  is  due  to  the  mind  of  someone  in  the 
past:  its  formulation,  at  any  rate,  was  the 
act  of  a  man. 

These  same  illuminations  of  history  that 
we  have  been  speaking  of  were  due  to  the 
enlightenment  of  individual  minds.  Our 
Revolution  of  1776  was  made  interesting 
by  its  state  papers,  and  to-day  our  knowl 
edge  of  that  time  is  a  knowledge  of  the 
minds  of  Washington,  Franklin,  and  the 
other  patriots.  Now  the  light  by  which  we 
to-day  see  the  Anti-slavery  period  was  first 
shed  on  it  by  one  man  —  William  Lloyd 
Garrison.  That  slavery  was  wrong,  every- 
!one  knew  in  his  heart.  The  point  seen  by 
Garrison  was  the  practical  point  that  the 
slavery  issue  was  the  only  thing  worth 
thinking  about,  and  that  all  else  must  be 
postponed  till  slavery  was  abolished.  He 
saw  this  by  a  God-given  act  of  vision  in 
1829;  and  it  was  true.  The  history  of  the 
spread  of  this  idea  of  Garrison's  is  the  his 
tory  of  the  United  States  during  the  thirty 
years  after  it  loomed  in  his  mind.  From 
the  day  Garrison  established  the  Lib- 
6 


INTRODUCTION 

erator  he  was  the  strongest  man  in  America, 
He  was  affected  in  his  thought  by  no  one. 
What  he  was  thinking,  all  men  were  des 
tined  to  think.  How  had  he  found  that 
clew  and  skeleton-key  to  his  age,  which  put 
him  in  possession  of  such  terrible  power? 
What  he  hurled  in  the  air  went  everywhere 
and  smote  all  men.  Tide  and  tempest  served 
him.  His  power  of  arousing  uncontrol 
lable  disgust  was  a  gift,  like  magic;  and 
he  seems  to  sail  upon  it  as  a  demon  upon  the 
wind.  Not  Andrew  Jackson,  nor  John 
Quincy  Adams,  nor  Webster,  nor  Clay,  nor 
Benton,  nor  Calhoun, —  who  dance  like 
shadows  about  his  machine. —  but  William 
Lloyd  Garrison  becomes  the  central  figure  in 
American  life. 

If  one  could  see  a  mystical  presentation 
of  the  epoch,  one  would  see  Garrison  as  a 
Titan,  turning  a  giant  grindstone  or  elec 
trical  power-wheel,  from  which  radiated  vi 
brations  in  larger  and  in  ever  larger,  more 
communicative  circles  and  spheres  of  agita 
tion,  till  there  was  not  a  man,  woman,  or 
child  in  America  who  was  not  a-tremble. 

We  know,  of  course,  that  the  source  of 

these  radiations  was  not  in  Garrison.     They 

came  from  the  infinite  and  passed  out  into 

the  infinite.     Had  there  been  no  Garrison 

7 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

they  would  somehow  have  arrived  and  a 
some  time  would  have  prevailed.  But  his 
torically  speaking  they  did  actually  pas 
through  Garrison:  he  vitalized  and  perma 
nently  changed  this  nation  as  much  as  on 
man  ever  did  the  same  for  any  nation  in  th 
history  of  the  world. 


II 

THE   BACK-GROUND 

LET  us  consider  the  first  fifty  years  of  our 
national  history.  There  was  never  a  mo 
ment  during  this  time  when  the  slavery"  "is 
sue  was  not,  a  sleeping  serpent  That  issue 
lay  coiled  up  under  the  table  during  the  de 
liberations  of  the  Constitutional  Convention 
in  1787.  It  was,  owing  to  the  invention  of 
the  cotton  gin,  more  than  half  awake  at  the 
time  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  in  1803  ;  and 
slavery  was  continued  in  the  Louisiana  ter 
ritory  by  the  terms  of  the  treaty.  There 
after  slavery  was  always  in  everyone^ 
mind,  thougfiiot  always  flfi  "frfa 


slave  state  and  a  tree  statewere.  jis^  ajnatter 

of  practice,  always  admitted  in  pairs.     Tims, 
Vermont    and    Kentucky,    Tennessee    and   ^- 
Ohio,   Louisiana  and   Indiana,   Mississippi     I 
and  Illinois,   had  each  been  offset  against 
the  other.     This  was  to  preserve  the  balance    J 
of   power.     The   whole   country,    however;*-^ 
was  in  a  state  of  unstable  equilibrium  and 
9 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

the  era  of  good  feeling  oscillated  upon  the 
top  of  a  craggy  peak. 

At  last,  in  1818-20,  came  two  years  of 
fierce,  open  struggle  over  slavery  in  the  ad 
mission  of  Missouri,  which  state  jwas 
formed  frorfTpart  of  the^XouisianaT^Eur- 
chase.  Southern  threats  of  disunion  clashed 
with  Northern  taunts  of  defiance  in  the 
House  of  Representatives.  In  the  outcome, 
the  Missouri  Compromise  admitted  Missouri 
with  slavery;  and  prohibited  slavery  in  that 
part  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  which  lay 
north  of  the  latitude  of  36°  30',  except  in  the 
portion  included  in  Missouri.  This  com 
promise  became,  in  the  public  mind,  as  sacred 
as  the  Constitution  itself;  so  that  when,  in 
1854,  the  Compromise  was  repealed,  the 
whole  North  felt  that  the  bottom  had 
dropped  out  of  their  government.  The 
North  believed  itself  to  be  betrayed.  The 
savage  feeling  which  led  up  to  war  developed 
rapidly  at  the  North  after  this  time.  The 
war  came  as  the  final  outcome  of  a  great 
malady.  But  we  must  return  to  1820. 

During  the  decade  that  followed  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  everyone  in  America  fell 
sick.  It  was  not  a  sickness  that  kept  men 
in  bed.  They  went  about  their  business, — 
the  lawyer  to  court,  the  lady  to  pay  calls,  the 
10 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

merchant  to  his  wharf.     The  amusements, 
and  the  religious,  literary,  and  educational 
occupations   of  mankind  went   forward  as 
usual.     But  they  all  went  forward  under 
the  gradually  descending  fringe  of  a  mist, 
an   unwholesome-feeling   cloud   of   oppres 
sion.     No  one  could  say  why  it  was  that  his 
food  did  not  nourish  him  quite  as  it  used  to 
do,  nor  his  unspoken  philosophy  of  life  any 
longer  cover  the  needs  of  his  nature.     This 
was  especially  strange,   because   everybody 
ought  to  have  been  perfectly  happy.     HacT\ 
not  the  country  emerged  from  the  War  of  1 
the  Revolution  in  the  shape  of  a  new  and  ^> 
glorious  Birth  of  Time, —  a  sample  to  all    j 
mankind  ?     Had  it  not  survived  the  dangers    j 
of  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain  ?     And/ 
what  then  remained  for  us  except  to  go  for 
ward  victoriously  and  become  a   splendid, 
successful,  vigorous,  and  benevolent  people? 
Everything  was  settled  that  concerned  the 
stability  of  our  form  of  government.     The 
future  could  surely  contain  nothing  except 
joyous  progress. 

The  Americans  of  1820-30  expounded  the~~| 
glorious  nature  of  their  own  destiny. 
They  challenged  the  casual  visitor  to  deny 
it;  and  became  quite  noted  for  their  insist 
ence  upon  this  claim,  and  for  their  deter- 
ii 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

mination  to  secure  the  acknowledgment  of  it 
by  all  men. 

At  the  bottom  of  this  nervous  concern 
there  was  not,  as  is  generally  supposed, 
merely  the  bumptious  pride  and  ignorance 
of  a  new  nation.  There  was  something 
more  complex  and  more  honorable;  there 
was  an  inner  knowledge  that  none  of  these 
things  were  true.  This  knowledge  was 
forced  upon  our  fathers  by  their  familiarity 
with  their  own  political  literature  and  with 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  partic 
ular.  There  was  a  chasm  between  the 
agreeable  statement  that  all  men  are  created 
free  and  equal,  and  the  horrible  fact  of  hu 
man  slavery.  The  thought  of  this  incon 
gruity  troubled  every  American.  No 
recondite  or  difficult  reasoning  was  re 
quired  to  produce  the  mental  anguish 
that  now  began  to  oppress  America.  The 
only  thing  necessary  was  leisure  for  anguish, 
and  this  leisure  first  became  possible  at  the 
close  of  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain. 
The  operation  of  the  thought  was  almost  en 
tirely  unconscious,  and  its  issue  in  pain  al 
most  entirely  unexpressed. 
r  The  articulate  classes  had  not  talked  much 
•  about  slavery  since  the  days  of  the  consti- 
\  tutional  compromises,  and  it  is  the  aged  Jef- 

12 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

ferson  who  writes  from  Monticello  apropos 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise, — "  This 
momentous  question,  like  a  fire-bell  in  the 
night,  awakened  and  filled  me  with  terror. 
I  considered  it  at  once  the  knell  of  the 
Union." 

Now  there  never  was  a  moment  in  the 
history  of  the  country  when  this  fire-bell 
was  quite  silent  The  educational  policy 
of  the  articulate  classes  of  society  during 
the  first  fifty  years  of  the  Nation's  life  had 
been  to  hush  the  bell. 

Ever  since  the  Southern  members  in  the 
Constitutional  Convention  had  showed  their 
teeth,  and  threatened  to  withdraw  if  slavery 
were  disturbed,  a  policy  of  sJle*u**  faffd  fry? 
adopted.  The  questions  covered  by  the 
constitution  were  to  be  regarded  as  con 
clusively  settled  The  bandages  must  never 
be  taken  off  them.  Any  person  who  re 
views  the  history  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion  can  sympathize  with  this  timidity;  for 
it  seems  like  a  miracle  that  the  Colonies 
should  ever  have  come  together, —  so  an 
tagonistic  were  their  interests,  and  their 
ideals.  The  Colonists  feared  some  new 
breach,  and  there  ensued  a  non-intellectual 
determination  that  certain  questions  should 
not  be  re-examined:  tins  determination 
13 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

gradually  grew  into  our  great  stupefying 
dogma  which  says  to  the  private  citizen, 
"  This  is  our  way  of  doing  things :  you-be- 
damned :  intellect  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
matter:  it  is  American."  This  dogma, 
which  arose  out  of  the  needs  of  our  early 
days,  has  become  the  most  widespread  form 
of  metaphysical  faith  among  us.  No  doubt 
all  nations  harbor  similar  prejudices  as  to 
their  own  institutions;  but  the  nations  of 
Europe  have  been  jostled  into  liberalism  by 
their  contiguity  one  with  another;  and  the 
jostling  is  now  being  extended  to  us.  Dur 
ing  our  early  history,  however,  we  were  iso 
lated,  and  our  intellectual  classes  took  their 
American  history  a  little  too  seriously.  The 
state  of  mind  of  our  statesmen  and  scholars 
in  that  epoch  is  well  summed  up  in  Web 
ster's  reply  to  Hayne.  That  speech  closes 
an  epoch.  It  is  the  great  paving-stone  of 
conclusive  demonstration,  placed  upon  the 
mouth  of  a  natural  spring. 

All  this  while  something  had  been  left  out 
in  all  the  nation's  political  and  social  phi 
losophy —  something  which  policy  forbade 
men  to  search  for,  and  this  something  was 
beginning  to  move  in  the  pit  of  the  stomach 
of  Americans,  and  to  make  them  feel  ex 
ceedingly  and  vaguely  ill.  In  order  to  bind 
14 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

the  Colonies  into  a  more  lasting  union,  a 
certain  suppression  of  truth,  a  certain  tram 
pling  upon  instinct 'had  been  resorted  to  in 
the  Constitution.  All  the  parties  to  that 
instrument  thoroughly  understood  the  in 
iquity  of  slavery  and  deplored  it.  All  the 
parties  were  ashamed  of  slavery  and  yet  felt 
obliged  to  perpetuate  it.  They  wrapped  up 
a  twenty  years'  protection  of  the  African 
slave  trade  in  a  colorless  phrase. 

"  The  migration  or  importation  of  such 
persons  as  any  of  the  states  now  existing 
shall  think  proper  to  admit,  shall  not  be 
prohibited  by  the  Congress  prior  to  the  year 
one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eight,  but 
a  tax  or  duty  may  be  imposed  on  such  im 
portations,  not  exceeding  ten  dollars  for 
each  person." 

Now  the  slave  trade  meant  the  purchase 
upon  African  coasts  of  negroes  and  ne- 
gresses,  their  branding,  herding,  manacling, 
and  transportation  between  decks  across 
tropical  seas.  The  African  slave  trade  is 
probably  the  most  brutal  organized-crime  in 
history.  Our  fathers  did  not  dare  to  name 
it.  So  of  the  fugitive  slave  law;  —  the 
Constitution  deals  with  it  in  the  cruel,  quiet 
way  in  which  monstrous  tyranny  deals  with 
the  fictions  of  administrative  law.  "  No 
15 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

person  held  to  service  or  labor  in  one  state 
under  the  laws  thereof,  escaping  into  another, 
shall,  in  consequence  of  any  law  or  regula 
tion  therein,  be  discharged  from  such  serv 
ice  or  labor;  but  shall  be  delivered  up  on 
claim  of  the  party  to  whom  suclTservice  or 
labor  may  be  due." 

In  an  age  in  which  the  Inquisition  is  abso 
lutely  dominant,  its  officials  are  almost  kind. 
The  leaden  touch  of  hypocrisy  was  thus  in 
the  heart  of  our  Constitution.  Cold-heart- 
edness  radiated  from  the  Ark  of  our 
Covenant.  We  condone  this  because  we 
know  that  many  of  these  fathers  really 
did  believe  that  slavery  was  probably  going 
to  diminish  and  die  out  in  the  country. 
Even  while  protecting  it  they  hoped  for  the 
best,  and  knew  not  what  they  did.  But  as 
slavery  became  more  important  instead  of 
less  important,  and  as  the  cruelty  of  it  be 
came  more  visible,  the  bond  of  the  document 
pressed  upon  the  conscience  of  the  people. 
We  had  undertaken  more  than  we  could  per 
form.  ,The  suppression  of  trutht  the. tramp 
ling^  upon  instinct,  which  we  had  accepted 
as  a  duty,  was  stifling  us.  For  the  first 
fifty  years  of  our  national  life  no  reaction 
was  visible.  And  then  there  ensued  a  fer 
mentation,  a  tumult  in  the  heart  which  noth- 
16 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

ing  could  quell.  This  tumult  began  long 
before  it  showed  itself.  Its  dialectic  and 
logic  were  developed  and  ready  for  use,  like 
the  wings  of  the  locust  in  the  shell.  The  na 
tures  of  men  were  beginning  to  heave  and 
to  swell  — :  and  at  last,  when  Garrison  speaks 
out,  behold,  he  is  in  electrical  communica 
tion  with  an  age  over-charged  with  passion. 
His  thought  is  understood  immediately. 
Every  implication,  every  consequence,  every 
remote  contingency  has  been  anticipated  in 
the  public  consciousness,  and  there  ensues 
explosion  after  explosion:  crash  generates 
crash:  storm  routes  of  continuous  passion 
plow  the  heavens  across  the  continent  from 
sea  to  sea.  In  truth  our  whole  civilization, 
our  social  life,  our  religious  feelings,  our 
political  ideas,  had  all  become  accommo 
dated  to  cruelty,  representative  of  tyranny. 
The  gigantic  backbone  of  business-interest 
was  a  slavery  backbone.  We  were  a  slave 
republic.  For  a  gejieration,  Jiaj^£qr_  two 
hundred  years,  we  had  tolerated  slavery; 
and  for  a regeneration  it  had  been,  a  sacred 
thing,- —  a  man  must  suppress  his  feelings  in 
speaking  of  it. 

Now  there  is  nothing  more  injurious  to 
the  character  and  to  the  intellect  than  the 
suppression  of  generous  emotion.     It  means 
17 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

death :  —  sickness  to  the  individual,  blight  to 
the  race.  Compassion  shining  through  the 
heart  wears  the  very  name  and  face  of  Di 
vine  Life.  It  makes  the  limbs  strong  and 
the  mind  capable ;  it  strengthens  the  stomach 
and  supports  the  intestines.  Cramp  this 
emotion,  and  you  will  have  a  half-dead  man, 
whose  children  will  be  less  well-nourished 
than  himself. 

It  is  hard  to  imagine  the  falsetto  condi 
tion  of  life  in  the  Northern  States  in  1829; 
—  the  lack  of  spontaneity  and  naturalness 
about  everybody,  so  far  as  externals  went, 
and  the  presence  of  extreme  solicitude  in 
the  bottom  of  everybody's  heart.  Emerson 
speaks  in  his  journal  ( 1834)  of  the  fine  man 
ners  of  the  young  Southerners,  brought  up 
amidst  slavery,  and  of  the  deference  which 
Northerners,  both  old  and  young,  habitually 
paid  to  the  people  of  the  South.  It  seems 
to  have  been  regarded  as  a  social  duty  at  the 
North  to  shield  the  feelings  of  Southerners, 
and,  as  it  were,  to  apologize  for  not  owning 
slaves.  The  feelings  of  the  Northern  phi 
lanthropist,  however,  were  never  regarded 
with  delicacy.  On  the  contrary  it  was 
thought  to  be  his  duty  to  suppress  his  feel 
ings.  Any  exhibition  of  humane  sentiment 
\vrTere~slavery  was  concerned, —  and  it  was 
18 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

always  concerned, —  was  punished  immedi-, 
ately.     The  most  natural  impulses,  the  most 
simple  acts  of  human  piety  could  be  indulged 
in  only  through  an  initiation  of  fierce  pain, 
generally  followed  by  social  ostracism.     The  - 
right  to  draw  one's  breath  involved  a  strug 
gle  with  Apollyon. 

"  Only  a  few  days  before  one  of  our  meet-^ 
ings,"   writes   Henry  I.    Bowditch,  one  ofj 
Garrison's   early   recruits    from  the   social  • 
world  of  Boston,  "  a  young  lady  had  hoped  r 
that  I  *  would  never  become  an  Abolitionist '  j 
and  about  the  same  time  Frederick  Doug-} 
lass  appeared  as  a  runaway  slave.     He  was 
at  the  meeting  in  Marlboro'   Chapel.     Of 
course  I  was  introduced  to  him,  and,  as  I 
would  have  invited  a  white  friend,  I  asked 
him  home  to  dine  with  me  in  my  small  abode 
in  Bedford  Street.     It  is  useless  to  deny  that 
I  did  not  like  the  thought  of  walking  with 
him  in  open  midday  up  Washington  Street. 
I  hoped  I  would  not  meet  any  of  my  ac 
quaintances.     I  had,  however,  hardly  turned 
into  the  street  before  I  met  the  young  lady 
who  had  expressed  her  wish  as  above  stated. 
I  am  glad  now  to  say  that  I  did  not  skulk. 
I  looked  at  her  straight  and  bowed  in  *  my 
most  gracious  manner '  as  if  I  were  '  all 
right/  while  I  saw  by  her  look  of  regret  that 
19 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

she  thought  me  '  all  wrong.'  It  was,  how 
ever,  something  like  a  cold  sponge-bath, — 
that  Washington  Street  walk  by  the  side  of 
a  black  man, —  rather  terrible  at  the  outset, 
but  wonderfully  warming  and  refreshing 
afterwards !  I  had  literally  jumped  '  in 
medias  res/  But  I  did  not  hear  until  years 
afterwards,  and  a  long  time  after  Douglass 
had  held  office  in  Washington  under  Federal 
Government,  and  the  slavery  of  his  own  race 
had  been  washed  out  in  blood,  what  I  was 
doing  for  him  at  the  moment  that  as  a  friend 
I  asked  him  to  walk  home  with  me  to  dinner. 
How  little  do  we  appreciate  acts  that  seem 
trivial  or  something  worse  to  us,  but  which 
to  others,  affected  by  such  acts,  are  of  in 
dispensable  importance!  Beautiful  to  me 
seems  now  the  act,  inasmuch  as  it  helped  to 
raise  a  poor,  down-trodden  soul  into  a 
proper  self-appreciation.  And  how  much  I 
thank  God  that  He  led  me  by  giving  me  a 
love  of  freedom,  and  something  like  a  con 
science  to  act  as  I  did  then."  * 

The  strain  of  that  walk  upon  Bowditch 

*  Many  years  afterwards,  when  an  assemblage  of 
anti-slavery  veterans  and  hosts  of  young  colored 
men  were  honoring  Frederick  Douglass  in  a  public 
hall  in  Boston,  he  alluded  to  this  incident  with  the 
remark,  "  Dr.  Bowditch  I  greet  joyfully  here,  for  he 
first  treated  me  as  if  I  were  a  wan." 
20 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

is  felt  forty  years  later  in  his  account  of  it. 
The  profound  political  instinct  which  led 
him  to  take  the  walk  is  as  noticeable  as  the 
religious  nature  of  his  impulse.  It  is  won 
derful  to  reflect  how  little  the  significance 
of  the  act  could  have  been  understood  by 
any  casual  observer  of  the  scene.  Here  is 
a  man  who  turns  down  one  street  rather 
than  another,  upon  meeting  an  acquaintance. 
He  looks  like  a  gentleman  doing  an  act  of 
politeness ;  while  he  is,  in  fact,  a  saint  going 
through  the  fire  for  his  faith,  and  a  hero  sav 
ing  the  republic.  So  banal  are  externals,  so 
deep  is  reality.  But  our  present  interest  in 
the  incident  lies  in  this, —  that  it  measures 
the  separation  of  Massachusetts  from  the 
ordinary  standards  of  Europe.  Frederick 
Douglass  was  almost  a  man  of  genius  and 
he  looked  like  a  man  of  genius.  His  photo 
graph  at  the  time  of  his  escape  from  slav 
ery  might  be  the  photograph  of  a  musician 
or  a  painter.  He  was  the  kind  of  man  who, 
in  a  Paris  or  London  salon,  would  excite 
anyone's  passing  notice,  as  perhaps  a  South 
American  diplomat  or  artist. 

An    intelligent    foreign    observer    might 

have    told    Bowditch    that    the    sufferings 

which   both   Bowditch  and  Douglass   were 

enduring   betrayed   the    fact   that   a   social 

21 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

revolution  was  under  way.  They  were 
the  sign  of  an  approaching  homogeneity. 
This  universal  disturbance,  this  universal 
throe  is  the  first  thing  that  all  the  people 
of  the  United  States  ever  experienced  to 
gether.  Their  former  unions  had  been 
political  and  external :  this  was  spiritual  and 
internal. 

We  are  familiar  with  the  Northern  form 
of  the  uneasiness,  because  the  Northerner 
could  speak.  He  cried  out ;  and  through  his 
utterance  came  the  cure.  But  of  the  pain  of 
the  Southerner,  to  whom  all  expression  of 
feeling  was  denied,  we  know  nothing. 
With  the  rise  of  Abolition,  perished  every 
vestige  of  free  speech  at  the  South.  Events 
now  converged  to  crush  the_manhopd  out 
of  the  slave-holding  classes.  _  A  Southerner 
could  not  be  gentle,  unselfish,  quick  to  speak 
his  thought,  or  genuinely  interested  In  any 
thing.  His  opinions  were  prepared  for  him 
before  he  was  born;  and  they  were  light- 
killing  illusions, —  the  precursors  of  mania. 
The  enactment  of  very  stringent  and  in 
human  slave  codes,  and  the  prohibition  of  all 
education  to  the  slaves  followed  in  the  wake 
of  the  Abolition  outbreaks.  The  maturing 
of  a  sort  of  philosophy  of  slavery,  accord 
ing  to  which  slavery  was  seen  as  the  cor- 
22 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

nerstone  of  religion  and  progress,  was  the 
work  of  the  following  decade,  and  the  task 
of  Calhoun.  The  corollaries  to  this  philos 
ophy  which  involved  an  abandonment  of 
popular  education,  and  the  cutting  off  of  the 
South  from  every  intellectual  contact  with 
the  civilization  of  Europe,  were  duly  worked 
out  during  the  next  thirty  years.  By  the 
time  the  war  came  there  existed  a  sort  of 
Religion  of  Slavedom.  The  Pro-slavery 
Northern  Democrats  of  Buchanan's  time 
held  opinions  which  would  have  shocked  the 
most  pronounced  slaveholders  of  1820. 

During  all  this  time  Virginia  and  the 
Carolinas, —  which  constituted  the  Holyland 
of  the  Slave  Dispensation, —  endured  a  si 
lent  exodus  and  migration  on  the  part  of  the 
more  liberal  spirits.  Men  even  went  to 
New  Orleans  to  escape  the  tyranny  of  slave 
opinion  at  Charleston.  Thus  were  the  souls 
of  Americans  squeezed  and  their  tempers 
made  acid.  A  slightly  too  ready  responsive 
ness  to  stimulus  of  any  kind  came  to  be  the 
mark  of  the  American,  whether  at  the  North 
or  at  the  South;  the  difference  being  that 
the  too  ready  response  at  the  South  was  apt 
to  be  an  insult,  at  the  North  an  apology. 

This  hair  trigger  nervousness  on  the  part 
of  everybody  was  the  result  of  poison  in  the 
23 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

/'  system.  What  could  the  manly  Southern 
youth  do  ?  Leave  all  and  follow  Abolition  ? 
He  knew  of  Abolition  only  that  it  was  a  vil 
lainous  attack  on  his  father's  character  and 
property.  He  was  in  the  grip  of  a  relent- 

x  less,  moving  hurricane  of  distorted  views, 
false  feelings,  erroneous  philosophy;  and  he 

U'oiew  nothing  dearly,  understood  nothing 
:learly,  until  he  perished  upon  the  battle- 
ields  of  the  Civil  War,  fighting  like  a  hero. 
It  is  impossible  in  describing  the  course  of 
the  Slave  Power  between  1832-65  to  avoid 
harsh  language.  If  ever  wickedness  came 
upward  in  the  counsels  of  men,  it  did  so 
here.  Yet  there  are  elements  in  all  these 
matters  which  elude  our  analysis.  The  vir 
tues  glimmer  and  seem  to  go  out;  but  they 
are  never  really  extinguished.  How  much 
idealism,  how  much  latent  heroism  must 
have  existed  in  the  South  during  all  these 
years  before  the  war,  was  seen  when  the  war 
came.  Villains  do  not  choose  for  them 
selves  Commanders  like  Robert  E.  Lee  and 
Stonewall  Jackson.  It  is  lost,  that  old  so 
ciety,  and  it  died  almost  speechless, —  died 
justly  and  inevitably.  Yet  we  do  well  to 
remember  with  what  a  flame  of  sacrifice 
it  perished,  to  remember  with  what  force, 
what  devotion,  what  heroism,  Humanity 
24 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

showed  herself  to  be  still  adorned  in  that 
hour  of  an  all-devouring  atonement. 

The  great  fever  came  to  an  end  with 
Appbmattox.  The  delirium  stopped:  the 
plague  had  been  expelled. "  TKef  nation  was 
not  dead :  the  jiation  was  at  the  beginning  of 
ITTong  convalescence.^  It  is,  however,  about 
the  earlier  symptoms  of  the  disorder  that  I 
would  speak  here,  about  the  presentiments 
of  headache  and  nausea,  and  about  that 
dreadf idlest  moment  in  all  sickness  (as  it 
seems  to  me),  the  moment  when  we  admit 
that  something  serious  is  coming  on. 

The  struggle  between  the  North  and  the 
South  began  over  free  speech  about  the 
negro,  and  especially  about  the  right  of 
benevolent  people  at  the  North  to  extend 
their  benevolence  to  the  negro,  as,  for  in 
stance,  in  their  schools,  Sunday-schools,  hos 
pitals,  etc.  Now  the  South  sincerely  be 
lieved  that  the  Missouri  Compromise  of 
1820  had  morally  bound  the  North  not  to 
talk  about  slavery  in  private  conversation, 
and  not  to  treat  the  negro  as  a  human  being. 
The  South  had  succeeded  in  imposing  this 
conviction  upon  the  whole  North. 

"  The  patriotism  of  all  classes/'  wrote  Ed 
ward  Everett,  Governor  of  Massachusetts, 
in  a  message  to  his  Legislature,  "  the  patri- 
25 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

otism  of  all  classes  must  be  invoked  to  ab 
stain  from  discussion,  which  by  exasperat 
ing  the  master,  can  have  no  other  effect  than 
to  render  more  oppressive  the  condition  of 
the  slave." 

This  paralysis  of  dumbness  and  of  fear 
touched  everyone.  It  was  not  exactly  fear, 
either,  but  a  sort  of  subtle  freemasonry, 
a  secret  belief  that  nothing  must  be  dis 
turbed.  The  Southerners  lived  in  sincere 
terror  of  slave  uprisings  —  and  they  man 
aged  to  convey  a  mysterious  tremor  to  the 
North  upon  the  subject. 

Dr.  Channing  was  that  age's  figure-head. 
He  was  the  most  eminent  man  in  the  coun 
try;  the  moral  sciences  were  his  province. 
He  was,  therefore,  constantly  appealed  to 
by  all  persons  and  parties  upon  the  slavery 
question.  His  responses  and  his  conduct 
upon  such  occasions  give  the  best  key  to  that 
age  which  we  have ;  and  his  character  will  be 
discussed  as  long  as  posterity  takes  an  in 
terest  in  the  epoch.  This  must  be  my  ex 
cuse  for  recurring  to  Dr.  Channing  from 
time  to  time  and  for  using  him,  at  this 
point,  to  illustrate  the  flatness  and  tameness 
/of  good  men  in  that  age ;  yes,  to  illustrate  the 
spiritual  domination  of  evil  at  the  time  when 
Garrison  began  his  crusade.  The  drawing- 
26 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

rooms  of  our  grandfathers'  times  contained 
automata;  ghosts  clustered  about  the  din 
ner  tables.  The  people  had  forgotten  what 
the  sound  of  a  man's  voice  was  like.  That 
is  why  they  were  so  startled  by  Garrison. 

Even  Channing,  who  was  a  true  saint, 
and  when  time  was  given  him,  a  cour 
ageous  man,  is  an  injured  being  —  like  a 
beautiful  plant  which  has  grown  to  ma 
turity  in  a  dungeon.  Under  the  pres 
sure  of  his  own  conscience  and  of  certain 
hammering  Abolitionists  who  were  his 
friends,  he  wrote  an  analysis  of  slavery, 
and  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the 
Abolitionists  on  the  question  of  free  speech. 
It  is  to  his  everlasting  honor  that  he  did  this : 
for  he  sincerely  deplored  the  methods  of  the 
Abolitionists  and  was  incapable  of  under 
standing  their  mission.  By  his  writings  on 
slavery  and  by  his  act  in  standing  by  the 
Abolitionists  on  the  question  of  free  speech, 
Channing  became  a  broken  idol  to  all  of  the 
South  and  to  half  of  his  Boston  admirers. 
We  must  never  confound  him,  as  the  Abo 
litionists  were  prone  to  do,  with  the  contem 
porary  flock  of  time-serving  parsons. 
Channing  was  a  man  who  could,  and  did,  go 
through  the  fire  for  principle.  But  he  was 
a  man  lacking  in  instinct,  a  sad  man,  too 
27 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

reasonable  to  understand  this  crisis  or  know 
how  to  meet  it.  He  was  trampled  upon  by 
his  congregation,  and  knew  not  how  to  save 
himself. 

Dr.  Channing's  coldness  toward  Abolition 
might  be  shown  by  his  words  to  Daniel 
Webster  in  1828,  deprecating  any  agitation 
of  the  slavery  question ;  by  his  studied  avoid 
ance  of  Garrison  in  social  life;  by  his  inabil 
ity,  even  in  the  Essay  on  Slavery,  to  see  the 
importance  of  the  Abolition  movement ; —  or 
in  a  hundred  other  ways.  On  the  other 
hand,  Dr.  Channing's  services  to  the  Anti- 
slavery  cause  could  be  illustrated  by  this 
same  essay,  and  by  the  esteem  and  love 
which  many  leading  Anti-slavery  people  al 
ways  bore  him.  Let  us,  however,  go  to  the 
bottom  of  the  whole  matter. 

On  January  I3th,  1840,  Dr.  Charles  Fol- 
len,  a  German  enthusiast  and  one  of  the  few 
highly  educated  men  among  the  Abolition 
ists,  was  burned  alive  in  the  ill-fated  steamer 
Lexington,  while  on  a  journey  from  New 
York  to  Boston.  Follen  was  a  young  doc 
tor  of  laws  and  a  teacher  at  the  University 
of  Jena,  who  had  been  prosecuted  for  his 
liberal  opinions  by  the  reactionary  govern 
ments  of  Prussia  and  Austria  in  1824.  He 
had  fled  to  Switzerland  and  thence  to  the 
28 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

United  States.  His  friends  in  this  country 
secured  him  a  post  as  lecturer,  and  after 
wards  as  professor,  at  Harvard  College; 
which  post  he  lost  through  expressing  his 
opinions  on  slavery.  He  afterwards  took  a 
pastorate  in  the  Unitarian  Church  and  lost 
it  through  the  same  cause. 

Follen  was  what  Goethe  used  to  call  a 
"Schoene  Seele,"  —  beloved  of  all.  He 
was  an  especial  friend  of  Channing's.  His 
tragic  death  was  at  the  time  considered  by 
the  Abolitionists  as  the  severest  blow  which 
they  had  yet  received.  They  sought  a  place 
to  hold  a  commemorative  meeting  in  his 
honor,  and  they  applied  to  Channing  for 
permission  to  use  his  church;  which  Chan 
ning  accorded.  The  standing  committee  of 
the  church,  however,  cancelled  this  permis 
sion.  Channing's  biographer  speaks  as  fol 
lows: 

"  Nothing  in  all  his  (Channing's)  in 
tercourse  with  his  people,  nothing  in  his 
whole  Anti-slavery  experience,  caused  him  so 
much  pain  as  a  refusal  of  the  use  of  the 
church  to  the  Massachusetts  Anti-slavery 
Society,  on  the  sad  occasion  when  all  true- 
hearted  persons  were  called  to  mourn  the 
awful  death  of  Charles  Follen,  and  when 
the  Rev.  S.  J.  May  had  prepared  a  discourse 
29 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

in  commemoration  of  the  rare  virtues  of 
that  heroic  and  honored  man.  It  was  not 
only  the  insult  to  the  memory  of  a  beloved 
friend  that  grieved  him, —  though  this  could 
not  but  shock  his  quick  and  delicate  feel 
ings;  still  less  was  it  the  disregard,  under 
such  touching  circumstances,  of  his  well- 
known  wishes,  that  wounded  him  most 
deeply;  but  this  manifestation  of  a  want  of 
high  sentiment  in  the  congregation  to  which, 
for  so  many  years,  he  had  officiated  as  pas 
tor,  made  him  question  the  usefulness  of  his 
whole  ministry.  To  what  end  had  he 
poured  out  his  soul,  if  such  conduct  was  a 
practical  embodiment  of  the  principles  and 
precepts  which  he  had  so  earnestly  incul 
cated?  This  event  brought  home  to  his 
heart  the  conviction  that  the  need  was  very 
urgent  of  a  thorough  application  of  the 
Christian  law  of  love  to  all  existing  social 
relations." 

It  is  evident  to  the  common  mind  that 
Channing  should  have  resigned  his  post 
rather  than  accept  this  affront  from  his  flock. 
Nay,  Channing  should  have  resigned  twenty 
years  earlier,  and  upon  the  first  occasion 
when  any  such  subjection  of  his  own  im 
pulses  was  required  of  him.  The  anecdote 
shows  the  skeleton  that  lurked  in  all  the 
30 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

vestry  rooms  of  that  period.  It  shows  also 
how  partial  are  the  philosophic  illuminations 
of  men.  Dr.  Channing  disbelieved  in  the 
principle  of  association.  It  was  one  of  the 
points  in  his  disapproval  of  the  Anti-slavery 
people  that  they  worked  through  associa 
tions;  for  he  had  a  philosophic  disbelief  in 
the  theory  of  association.  I  share  this  dis 
belief  with  Dr.  Channing;  the  miserable 
squabbles  between  Anti-slavery  associations 
in  which  the  reformers  wasted  their  force 
and  impaired  their  tempers,  show  very 
clearly  the  dangers  inherent  in  association, 
which  dangers  Channing  very  clearly  saw. 
Yet  Channing  wras  himself  the  servant  of  an 
association;  and  every  fault  in  his  relation 
to  the  great  moral  question  of  his  time  may 
be  traced  to  that  fact. 

Association, —  business  or  social,  literary 
or  artistic,  religious  or  scientific, —  all  as 
sociation  is  opposed  to  any  disrupting  idea. 
The  merchants  and  lawyers  of  Boston  fled 
Abolition  as  a  plague ;  they  regarded  Aboli 
tion  as  an  enemy  to  be  fought  with  all  weap 
ons.  Garrison  was  once  taken  to  hear  Dr. 
Channing  by  an  acquaintance  of  both  parties, 
and  he  sat  in  a  pew  which  belonged  to  a  con 
servative  family,  but  which  that  family  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  throwing  open  to  others. 
31 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

On  the  Tuesday  following  this  apparition  of 
Garrison  in  the  sacred  pew,  the  future  use 
of  it  was  withdrawn  by  a  stiff  note  from  the 
conservative  family.  The  reason  for  this 
excess  of  caution  was  that  the  South  disci 
plined  Northern  merchants  by  a  withdrawal 
of  business;  and  the  South  kept  its  eyes 
open.  A  rumor  that  Garrison  had  been  seen 
in  a  particular  pew  might  make  the  pew- 
owner  a  marked  man  for  commercial  punish 
ment.  "  Mr.  May,"  said  a  New  York  mer 
chant  of  the  first  rank  to  the  reformer,  whom 
he  summoned  to  an  interview  during  the 
progress  of  an  Anti-slavery  meeting,  "  Mr. 
May,  we  are  not  such  fools  as  not  to  know 
that  slavery  is  a  great  evil;  a  great  wrong. 
But  it  was  consented  to  by  the  founders  of 
our  Republic.  It  was  provided  for  in  the 
Constitution  of  our  Union.  A  great  portion 
of  the  property  of  the  Southerners  is  in 
vested  under  its  sanction;  and  the  business 
of  the  North,  as  well  as  the  South,  has  be 
come  adjusted  to  it.  There  are  millions 
upon  millions  of  dollars  due  from  South 
erners  to  the  merchants  and  mechanics  of 
this  city  alone,  the  payment  of  which  would 
be  jeopardized  by  any  rupture  between  the 
North  and  the  South.  We  cannot  afford, 
sir,  to  let  you  and  your  associates  succeed 
32 


THE    BACK-GROUND 

in  your  endeavor  to  overthrow  slavery.  It 
is  not  a  matter  of  principle  with  us.  It  is 
a  matter  of  business  necessity.  We  cannot 
afford  to  let  you  succeed.  And  I  have  called 
you  out  to  let  you  know,  and  to  let  your  fel 
low-laborers  know,  that  we  do  not  mean  to 
allow  you  to  succeed.  We  mean,  sir,"  said 
he,  with  increased  emphasis, —  "we  mean, 
sir,  to  put  you  Abolitionists  down, —  by  fair 
means  if  we  can,  by  foul  means  if  we  must." 
Truly  the  world  was  not  very  different 
then  from  what  it  is  to-day.  If  a  man  takes 
a  stand  against  any  business  interest,  how 
ever  iniquitous,  that  interest  will  strike  at 
him  on  the  following  day. 


33 


Ill 

THE    FIGURE 

THE  essential  quality  of  all  this  old  society 
was  that  it  was  cold.  In  the  last  analysis, — 
after  the  historical  and  constitutional  ques 
tions  have  been  patiently  analyzed,  after  eco 
nomics  and  sociology  have  had  their  say, — 
the  trouble  with  the  American  of  1830  was 
that  he  had  a  cold  heart.  Cruelty,  lust,  busi 
ness  interest,  remoteness  from  European  in 
fluence  had  led  to  the  establishment  of  an  un 
feeling  civilization.  The  essential_£uality 
of  USirrison  is  tfral  hejs  hot.  This  must  be 
borne  in  mind  at  every  moment  as  the  chief 
and  real  quality  of  Garrison.  Disregard  the 
arguments;  sink  every  intellectual  concep 
tion,  every  bit  of  logic  and  of  analysis,  and 
look  upon  the  age;- — you  see  a  cold  age. 
Look  upon  Garrison : —  you  see  a  hot  coal  of 
fire.  He  plunges  through  the  icy  at 
mosphere  like  a  burning  meteorite  from  an 
other  planet. 

There  is  a  second  contrast.     The  age  was 
conciliatory  LJlarnson js  aggressive.     These 
34  — 


THE   FIGURE 

two  forms  of  the  contrast  between  Garrison 
and  his  age  lie  cfose  together  and  merge 
into  each  other:  yet  they  are  not  entirely 
identical :  the  first  concerns  the  emotions,  the 
second,  the  intellect.  Conciliation  was  the 
sin  of  that  age.  Now  this  anti-type,  this 
personified  enemy  of  his  age, —  Garrison, — 
must  in  his  nature  be  self-reliant,  self-assert 
ive,  self-sufficient.  He  relates  himself  to 
no  precedent.  He  strikes  out  from  his  inner 
thought.  He  is  even  swords-drawn  with 
his  own  thought  of  yesterday.  When  he 
changes  his  mind  he  asks  God  to  forgive  him 
for  ever  having  thought  otherwise.  His  in 
stinct  is  so  thoroughly  opposed  to  any  au 
thority  except  the  inner  light  of  conscience, 
that  he  makes  that  conscience, —  his  local, 
momentary  conscience, —  into  a  column  of 
smoke  sent  by  the  Lord.  Not  Bunyan,  not 
Luther  is  greater  than  Garrison  on  this  side 
of  his  nature.  He  is  not  an  intellectual  per 
son.  He  is  not  a  highly  educated  man. 
But  he  is  a  Will  of  the  first  magnitude,  a  will 
made  perfect,  because  almost  entirely  uncon 
scious,  almost  entirely  dedicated  and  sub 
dued  to  its  mission. 

I  quote  here  the  whole  of  the  first  editorial 
of  £he  Liberator  (January  ist,  1831)^  be^ 
cause  the  whole  of  Garrison  is  in  it.     In 
35 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

reading  it  let  us  remember  the  shattering, 
repulsive  power  which  self-assertion  exer 
cises  over  smooth,  cold  people  of  good  taste, 
whose  worldly  fortunes  and  sincere  spiritual 
beliefs  are  bound  up  for  all  eternity  with 
smoothness,  coldness,  and  good  taste.  The 
punctuation  and  typesetting  of  the  article, 
and  the  verses  (not  his  own)  at  the  end  of 
it,  may  also  be  noted  as  indicating  Garrison's 
taste  and  education: 

"  In  the  month  of  August,  I  issued  pro 
posals  for  publishing  The  Liberator  in 
Washington  City ;  but  the  enterprise,  though 
hailed  in  different  sections  of  the  country, 
was  palsied  by  public  indifference.  Since 
that  time,  the  removal  of  the  Genius  of  Uni 
versal  Emancipation  to  the  Seat  of  Govern 
ment  has  rendered  less  imperious  the  estab 
lishment  of  a  similar  periodical  in  that  quar 
ter. 

"  During  my  recent  tour  for  the  purpose 
of  exciting  the  minds  of  the  people  by  a 
series  of  discourses  on  the  subject  of  slavery, 
every  place  that  I  visited  gave  fresh  evi 
dence  of  the  fact  that  a  greater  revolution 
in  public  sentiment  was  to  be  effected  in  the 
free  States  —  and  particularly  in  New  Eng 
land —  than  at  the  South.  I  found  con 
tempt  more  bitter,  opposition  more  active, 
36 


THE   FIGURE 

detraction  more  relentless,  prejudice  more 
stubborn,  and  apathy  more  frozen,  than 
among  slave-owners  themselves.  Of 
course,  there  were  individual  exceptions  to 
the  contrary.  This  state  of  things  afflicted, 
but  did  not  dishearten  me.  I  determined  at 
every  hazard  to  lift  up  the  standard  oTemah- 
cipation  in  the  eyes  of  the  nation,  witfnn 
sight  of  Bunker  HULand  in  the  birthplace  of 
liberty.  That  standard  is  now  unfurled; 
and  long  may  it  float,  unhurt  by  the  spolia 
tions  of  time  or  the  missiles  of  a  desperate 
foe  —  yea,  till  every  chain  be  broken,  and 
every  bondman  set  free !  Let  Southern  op 
pressors  tremble  —  let  their  secret  abettors 
tremble  —  let  their  Northern  apologists 
tremble  —  let  all  the  enemies  of  the  perse 
cuted  blacks  tremble. 

"  I  deem  the  publication  of  my  original 
Prospectus  unnecessary,  as  it  has  obtained 
a  wide  circulation.  The  principles  therein 
inculcated  will  be  steadily  pursued  in  this 
paper,  excepting  that  I  shall  not  array  myself 
as  the  political  partisan  of  any  man.  In  de 
fending  the  great  cause  of  human  rights,  I 
wish  to  derive  the  assistance  of  all  religions 
and  of  all  parties." 

Thus  began  Garrison  in  his  first  editorial 
in  the  Liberator.  Does  this  seem  egotism, 
37 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

this  almost  pompous  deliberation,  this  taking 
off  his  coat  and  laying  it  across  a  chair  as  he 
makes  his  bow  to  the  public?  Yes,  it  is 
egotism.  It  is  gigantic  egotism, —  but  not 
the  egotism  of  vanity  or  self-seeking.  It  is 
the  selfless  egotism  of  a  supreme  self-asser 
tion,  put  forth  unconsciously  by  human  na 
ture;  and  as  such  it  is  in  itself  a  sample  of 
what  that  age  needed,  the  sample  of  a  spirit 
of  independence  without  which  slavery 
never  could  and  never  would  have  been 
abolished.  Let  us  proceed  with  the  edi 
torial.  ..."  Assenting  to  the  '  self- 
evident  truth '  maintained  in  the  American 
Declaration  of  Independence,  'that  all  men 
a£e_created  equal,  and  endowed  by  their 
Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights  — 
among  which  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur 
suit  of  happiness/  I  shall  strenuously  con 
tend  for  the  immediate  enfranchisement  of 
our  slave  population.  In  Park  Street 
Church,  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1829,  in  an 
address  on  slavery,  I  unreflectingly  assented 
to  the  popular  but  pernicious  doctrine  of 
gradual  abolition.  I  seize  this  opportunity 
to  make  a  full  and  unequivocal  recantation, 
and  thus  publicly  to  ask  pardon  of  my  God, 
of  my  country,  and  of  my  brethren,  the  poor 
slaves,  for  having  uttered  a  sentiment  so  full 
38 


THE    FIGURE 

of  timidity,  injustice,  and  absurdity.  A 
similar  recantation,  from  my  pen,  was  pub 
lished  in  the  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipa 
tion  at  Baltimore,  in  September,  1829.  My 
conscience  is  now  satisfied. 

"  I  am  aware  that  many  object  to  the  se 
verity  of  my  language;  but  is  there  not  cause 
for  severity?  I  will  be  as  harsh  as  truth, 
and  as  uncompromising  as  justice.  On  this 
subject,  I  do  not  wish  to  think,  or  speak,  or 
write,  with  moderation.  No!  no!  Tell  a 
man  whose  house  is  on  fire  to  give  a  moder 
ate  alarm ;  tell  him  to  moderately  rescue  his 
wife  from  the  hands  of  the  ravisher;  tell  the 
mother  to  gradually  extricate  her  babe  from 
the  fire  into  which  it  has  fallen ;  —  but  urge 
me  not  to  use  moderation  in  a  cause  like  the 
present.  I  am  in  earnest  —  I  will  not 
equivocate  - —  I  will  not  excuse  —  I  will  not 
retreat  a  single  inch  —  AND  I  WILL  BE 
HEARD.  The  apathy  of  the  people  is 
enough  to  make  every  statue  leap  from  its 
pedestal,  and  to  hasten  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead. 

"  It  is  pretended  that  I  am  retarding  the 
cause  of  emancipation  by  the  coarseness  of 
my  invective  and  the  precipitancy  of  my 
measures.  The  charge  is  not  true.  On  this 
question  my  influence, —  humble  as  it  is, — 
39 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

is  felt  at  this  moment  to  a  considerable  ex 
tent,  and  shall  be  felt  in  coming  years  — 
not  perniciously,  but  beneficially  —  not  as  a 
curse,  but  as  a  blessing;  and  posterity  will 
bear  testimony  that  I  was  right.  I  desire  to 
thank  God  that  He  enables  me  to  disre 
gard  '  the  fear  of  man  which  bringeth  a 
snare/  and  to  speak  his  truth  in  its  simplic 
ity  and  power.  .  .  . 

.     "  And    here    I    close    with    this 
fresh  dedication: 

"  Oppression !  I  have  seen  thee,  face  to  face, 
And  met  thy  cruel  eye  and  cloudy  brow ; 
But  thy  soul-withering  glance  I   fear  not 

now  — 
For  dread  to  prouder   feelings   doth  give 

place 

Of  deep  abhorrence!     Scouring  the  disgrace 
Of  slavish  knees  that  at  thy  footstool  bow, 
I  also  kneel  —  but  with  far  other  vow 
Do   hail   thee   and   thy    herd    of    hirelings 

base : — 

I  swear,  while  life-blood  warms  my  throb 
bing  veins, 
Still  to  oppose  and  thwart,  with  heart  and 

hand, 

Thy  brutalizing  sway  —  till  Afric's  chains 
Are  burst,  and  Freedom  rules  the  rescued 
land, — 

40 


THE    FIGURE 

Trampling  Oppression  and  his  iron  rod : 
Such  is  the  vow  I  take  —  SO  HELP  ME 
GOD!" 

*  Garrison's  early  history  is  the  familiar 
tale  of  poverty,  and  reminds  one  of  Benja 
min  Franklin's  boyhood.  His  mother,  a 
person  of  education  and  refinement,  was, 
during  Garrison's  babyhood,  plunged  into 
bitter  destitution.  He  was  born  in  New- 
1  buryport,  Massachusetts,  in  1805.  At  the 
age  of  nine,  in  order  to  help  pay  for  his 
board,  he  was  working  for  Deacon  Bartlett 
in  Newburyport.  Later,  he  learned  shoe- 
making  at  Lynn,  cabinet-making  at  Haver- 
hill,  and  in  1818,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  was 
apprenticed  to  a  printer  and  newspaper  pub 
lisher.  Now  began  his  true  education.  He 
read  Scott,  Byron,  Moore,  Pope,  and  Camp 
bell;  and  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  was  writ 
ing  newspaper  articles  in  the  style  of  the 
day.  By  the  time  he  was  twenty,  Garrison 
was  a  thoroughgoing  printer  and  journalist; 
and  during  the  last  three  years  of  his  ap 
prenticeship  he  had  entire  charge  of  his  mas 
ter's  paper.  During  the  next  four  years,  he 
edited  four  newspapers,  and  embraced  va- 
^  rious  reforms  besides  Anti-slavery,  e.  g., 
(  Temperance,  Education,  Peace,  Sabbatarian- 
\istn,  etc.  He  seems  at  this  period  to  be 
41 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

like  a  hound  on  a  scent,  as  he  takes  up 
and  abandons  one  newspaper  after  another. 
He  is  already  a  reformer,  already  a  boiling 
enthusiast,  already  an  insuppressible  Vol 
ubility,  already  one-ideaed  upon  any  sub 
ject  that  he  treats.  If  his  theme  be 
Temperance,  then  moderate  drinking  is 
the  worst  enemy  of  man.  He  joins  most 
heartily  in  the  anathema  against  to 
bacco  either  in  chewing,  smoking,  or  snuff 
ing.  He  is  against  capital  punishment  and 
imprisonment  for  debt,  and  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  he  would,  at  a  moment's  notice,  have 
.delivered  a  violent  judgment  upon  any  sub 
ject  that  aroused  his  compassion. 

Whatever  else  he  was,  he  was  a  full  grown 
being  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  when  Ben 
jamin  Lundy  persuaded  him  to  devote  his 
life  to  the  cause  of  the  slave.  Benjamin 
Lundy,  the  quiet  Quaker,  had  been  editing 
the  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipation  since 
1821,  and  was  at  this  time  (1828)  estab 
lished  in  Baltimore,  where  he  had  recently 
been  assaulted  and  almost  killed  in  the 
streets  by  Austin  Wool  folk,  a  slave  trader. 
Lundy's  practice  was  to  walk  from  town  to 
town  throughout  the  country,  founding  Anti- 
slavery  societies,  and  introducing  his  news 
paper.  He  first  met  Garrison  while  he  was 
42 


THE    FIGURE 

on  a  visit  to  Boston,  and  at  a  later  date  he 
walked  from  Baltimore  to  Bennington,  Ver 
mont,  where  Garrison  was  editing  a  journal, 
in  order  to  convert  Garrison.  He  suc 
ceeded.  Garrison  left  Vermont  and  became 
co-editor  of  the  Genius  in  Baltimore.  Be 
fore  he  migrated  to  Baltimore,  however,  he 
visited  Boston  and  there  on  July  4th,  1829, 
he  delivered  an  address  in  the  Park  Street 
Church  which  is  really  the  beginning  of  his 
mission.  The  Reverend  John  Pierpont 
(the  grandfather  of  Pierpont  Morgan) 
was  present  and  wrote  a  hymn  for  the  oc 
casion.  Whittier,  a_stripling,  was  also  pres-  >  v  ^ 
ent.  The  tone  and  substance  of  this  ad 
dress  are  strikingly  like  those  of  Emerson's 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  (delivered  six  years 
later),  in  which  Emerson  made  his  manly 
salutatory  to  his  age.  Garrison's  words  are 
as  follows: — 

"  I  speak  not  as  a  partisan  or  an  opponent 
of  any  man  or  measures,  when  I  say  that 
our  politics  are  rotten  to  the  core.  We 
boast  of  our  freedom,  who  go  shackled  to 
the  polls,  year  after  year,  by  tens,  and  hun 
dreds,  and  thousands!  We  talk  of  free 
agency,  who  are  the  veriest  machines  —  the 
merest  automata  —  in  the  hands  of  unprin 
cipled  jugglers !  We  prate  of  integrity,  and 
43 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

virtue,  and  independence,  who  sell  our  birth 
right  for  office,  and  who,  nine  times  in  ten, 
do  not  get  Esau's  bargain  —  no,  not  even  a 
mess  of  pottage !  Is  it  republicanism  to  say 
that  the  majority  can  do  no  wrong?  Then 
I  am  not  a  republican.  Is  it  aristocracy  to 
say  that  the  people  sometimes  shamefully 
abuse  their  high  trust?  Then  I  am  an  aris 
tocrat.  .  .  . 

"  Before  God,  I  must  say,  that  such  a  glar 
ing  contradiction  as  exists  between  our  creed 
and  practice,  the  annals  of  six  thousand 
years  cannot  parallel.  In  view  of  it,  I  am 
ashamed  of  my  country.  I  am  sick  of  our 
unmeaning  declamation  in  praise  of  lib 
erty  and  equality;  of  our  hypocritical  cant 
about  the  unalienable  rights  of  man.  I 
could  not,  for  my  right  hand,  stand  up  be 
fore  a  European  assembly,  and  exult  that  I 
am  an  American  citizen,  and  denounce  the 
usurpations  of  a  kingly  government  as 
wicked  and  unjust;  or,  should  I  make  the 
attempt,  the  recollection  of  my  country's 
barbarity  and  despotism  would  blister  my 
lips,  and  cover  my  cheeks  with  burning 
blushes  of  shame." 

Let  us  now  take  a  few  sentences  from 
Emerson's  Phi  Beta  Kappa  address : 

"  The  spirit  of  the  American  freeman  is 

44 


THE    FIGURE 

already  suspected  to  be  timid,  imitative, 
tame.  Public  and  private  avarice  make  the 
air  we  breathe  thick  and  fat.  The  scholar 
is  decent,  indolent,  complaisant.  See  al 
ready  the  tragic  consequence.  The  mind  of 
this  country,  taught  to  aim  at  low  objects, 
eats  upon  itself.  .  .  .  Young  men  of 
the  fairest  promise,  who  begin  life  upon 
our  shores,  inflated  by  the  mountain  winds, 
shined  upon  by  all  the  stars  of  God,  find 
the  earth  below  not  in  unison  with  these, 
but  are  hindered  from  action  by  the  dis 
gust  which  the  principles  on  which  busi 
ness  is  managed  inspire,  and  turn  drudges, 
or  die  of  disgust,  some  of  them  suicides. 
What  is  the  remedy?  They  did  not  yet 
see,  and  thousands  of  young  men  as  hope 
ful  now  crowding  to  the  barriers  for  the 
career  do  not  yet  see,,  that  if  the  single 
man  plant  himself  indomitably  on  his 
instincts,  and  there  abide,  the  huge  world 
will  come  round  to  him." 

The  difference  between  Emerson  and 
Garrison  is  that  Emerson  is  interested  in  aes 
thetic,  Garrison  in  social  matters.  The  one 
represents  the  world  of  intellect,  the  other, 
the  world  of  feeling.  Both  speak  the  same 
idea,  each  according  to  his  own  idiom. 
Both  are,  in  essence,  affronting  the  same 
45 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 


evil, —  the  Dominion  of  Slavery.  The  dif 
ference  is  that  Garrison  has  seen  the  evil 
plainly,  and  has  laid  his  hand  upon  it;  Em 
erson  was  to  live  in  ignorance  of  its  specific 
nature  for  many  years  to  come.  I  shall 
revert  again  to  the  relation  between  these 
two  young  men,  both  so  noble,  both  of 
such  immense  consequence  to  the  country, 
each  of  them,  in  a  sense,  the  father  of  all 
of  us, —  whose  spirits  were  raised  up  by  God 
to  shed  new  life  upon  America. 

We  must  return  to  Garrison  as  the  co- 
editor  with  Lundy  of  the  Genius  of  Uni 
versal  Emancipation  in  Baltimore.  Inas 
much  as  Garrison  had  already  received  his 
revelation  as  to  immediate  emancipation, 
and  Lundy  favored  slower  methods,  the 
two  partners  agreed  to  sign  their  articles 
separately.  Baltimore  was,  at  that  time,  the 
most  northern  port  in  the  coastwise  slave 
trade:  and  Garrison  constantly  saw  the 
slaves  being  shipped  south  in  New  England 
bottoms.  It  was  not  long  before  Garrison 
'  was  thrown  into  jail  in  Baltimore  as  the  re 
sult  of  a  suit  for  criminal  libel,  brought  by 
a  New  England  slave  trader  whom  he  had 
denounced.  The  Mr.  Todd  whom  he  "  li 
beled,"  and  about  whom  he  spoke  only  the 
truth,  was  a  fellow-townsman  of  Garrison's, 
46 


THE    FIGURE 

being  a  native  of  Newburyport,  Mass.,  and 
was  thus  a  natural  target  for  Garrison's  in 
vective.  Garrison  remained  in  jail  seven 
weeks,  during  which  time  he  conducted  a 
most  telling  campaign  of  pamphlets,  private 
letters  and  public  cards,  sonnets,  letters  to 
editors,  etc.,  with  the  result  that  the  whole 
of  America  heard  of  the  incident.  Mr.  Ar 
thur  Tappan  of  New  York  became  inter 
ested  in  the  case,  and  secured  Garrison's  re 
lease  by  paying  the  fine  of  one  hundred 
dollars.  This  was  in  the  spring  of  1830. 

Thus  it  may  be  seen  that  at  the  time  that 
Garrison  returned  to  Boston  and  established 
his  Liberator  (1830-31)  he  was  twenty-five 
years  old,  a  consummate  controversialist, 
and  the  apostle  of  a  new  theory, — Jmmedi- 
ate  Emancipation,  for  which  he  had  already 
suffered  imprisonment.  The  world  has  no 
terrors  for  a  man  like  this. 

Anti-slavery  action  did  not  begin  with 
Garrison.  There  had  been  Anti-slavery  So 
cieties  for  fifty  years  before  him;  ihere_ex-. 
isted  in  1830  perhaps  a  hundred  and  fifty 
of  them,  many  of  them  being  in  the  slave 
states.  But^  the  new  movement  did^not 
spring  from  these  old^^eHEsTTTf  was  mili- 
tanT  as  they  were  not :  it  was  dissatisfied 
with  their  mild  methods -and  inactivity;  in 
47 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

fact,  it  denounced  them.  The  new  move 
ment  came  bursting  up  like  a  subterranean 
torrent. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  Garrison  and  his 
mission  were  somehow  fundamentally  con 
nected  with  the  labors  of  the  Anti-slavery 
men  who  kept  the  name  of  mercy  alive  be 
tween  1776  and  1820.  Yet  these  old  agen 
cies  were  upheaved  from  beneath.  Aboli- 

}  tion  appeared  at  the  North  and  over 
slaughed  them;  the  Slave  Power  developed 
new  heat  at  the  South  and  burned  out  the 

'  roots  of  them.  Any  single  anecdote  of 
those  times  will  be  apt  to  illustrate  both 
sides  of  the  question,  i.  e.,  the  new  vulture 
quality  of  slavery  at  the  South,  and  the  new 
bulldog  quality  of  Abolition  at  the  North. 
For  instance,  when  the  Southern  statesmen 
recognized  the  existence  of  Abolition,  they 
began  passing  laws  against  the  introduction 
of  Abolition  literature  into  the  South,  and 
they  began  to  correspond  with  Northern 
statesmen  and  officials  with  the  aim  of  sup 
pressing  Garrison.  The  Legislature  of 
Georgia,  in  1831,  offered  a  reward  of 
$5000  for  the  arrest  and  conviction  of  Gar 
rison  under  the  laws  of  Georgia.  The 
Southern  press  went  into  paroxysms  of 
clamorous  rage.  On  the  other  hand,  Gar- 
48 


THE    FIGURE 

rison  is  by  no  means  deficient  in  vigor  of 
feeling.  The  following  is  his  comment  on 
the  reward: 

"  A  price  set  upon  the  head  of  a  citizen 
of  Massachusetts  —  for  what?  For  dar 
ing  to  give  his  opinions  of  the  moral  aspect 
of  slavery!  Where  is  the  liberty  of  the 
press  and  of  speech  ?  Where  the  spirit  of  our 
fathers?  WThere  the  immunities  secured  to 
us  by  our  Bill  of  Rights?  Are  we  the 
slaves  of  Southern  taskmasters?  Is  it 
treason  to  maintain  the  principles  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence?  Must  we 
say  that  slavery  is  a  sacred  and  benevolent 
institution,  or  be  silent?  Know  this,  ye 
senatorial  patrons  of  kidnappers!  that  we 
despise  your  threats  as  much  as  we  deplore 
your  infatuation:  nay,  more  —  know  that 
a  hundred  men  stand  ready  to  fill  our  place 
as  soon  as  it  is  made  vacant  by  violence. 
The  Liberator  shall  yet  live  —  live  to  warn 
you  of  your  danger  and  guilt  —  live  to 
plead  for  the  perishing  slaves  —  live  to  hail 
the  day  of  universal  emancipation ! " 

Now  we  can  see  at  a  glance  that  this  new 
Abolition  is  much  more  than  Abolition:  it 
is  Courage,^  Garrison's  tone  here  takes  us 
back  a  generation  to  James  Otis,  to  John 
Adams,  and  to  the  other  Revolutionary  he- 
49 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

roes;  and  he  is  really  standing  for  constitu 
tional  liberty  quite  as  distinctly,  and  at  as 
crucial  a  moment,  as  those  gentlemen  had 
done.  Garrison's  language  is  harsh ;  but  he 
is  almost  the  only  out-and-out  masculine 
person  in  the  North.  No:  there  was  one 
other, —  the  aged  John  Quincy  Adams ;  and 
Adams  was  as  harsh,  and  as  unmeasured,  as 
Garrison.  Nay,  Adams  was  personally  bit 
ter,  which  Garrison  never  was.  Adams 
was,  in  reality,  a  survivor  of  1776,  an  un 
tamed  aristocrat  —  and  he  bore  a  vase  of 
the  old  fire  in  his  bosom.  This  was  per 
mitted  to  Adams, —  because  no  one  could 
stop  him;  but  men  vaguely  imagined  that 
Garrison's  fire  could  be  put  out. 

In  1831,  Garrison  was  indicted  in  North 
Carolina.  The  South  was  not  wrong  in 
thinking  that  the  official  classes  at  the  North 
would  lend  aid  in  suppressing  the  new 
movement.  Judge  Thatcher  of  the  Munici 
pal  Court  in  Boston  made  a  charge  to  the 
Grand  Jury  (1832)  in  which  he  laid  the 
foundation  for  the  criminal  prosecution  of 
Abolitionists.  No  one  could  tell  just  how 
far  subserviency  might  go.  The  Mayor  of 
Boston,  Harrison  Gray  Otis,  was  nat 
urally  appealed  to  by  the  Southern  states 
men  to  protect  them  against  the  circulation 
50 


THE   FIGURE 

of  Abolition  literature.  It  was  in  1829  that 
Otis  was  first  called  on  to  do  something 
about  "  Walker's  appeal,"  a  fierce,  biblical 
pamphlet,  full  of  power,  written  by  a  col 
ored  man  in  Boston  and  urging  the  slaves 
to  rise.  Otis  replied  that  the  author  had 
not  made  himself  amenable  to  the  laws  of 
Massachusetts,  and  that  the  book  had  caused 
no  excitement  in  Boston.  Garrison  had 
had  nothing  to  do  with  Walker's  pamphlet, 
and  had  publicly  condemned  its  doctrines. 
None  the  less,  Walker's  appeal  was  an  out 
crop  of  the  same  subterranean  fire  that 
coursed  through  Garrison, —  and  when  Nat 
Turner's  Slave  Rebellion  broke  out  (1831) 
and  a  dozen  white  families  were  murdered 
in  Virginia,  the  whole  South  was  thrown 
into  a  panic,  and  attributed  the  insurrection 
to  the  teachings  of  the  Abolitionists. 

This  puny  rebellion  was  easily  put  down. 
Turner  was  hanged,  his  followers  were 
burnt  with  hot  irons,  their  faces  were  muti 
lated,  their  jaws  broken  asunder,  their  ham 
strings  cut,  their  bodies  stuck  like  hogs,  their 
heads  spiked  to  the  whipping-post.  No  con 
nection  was  ever  discovered  between  Nat 
Turner's  Rebellion  and  the  Abolitionists, 
who  never  at  any  time  sent  their  papers  to 
slaves.  The  illiteracy  of  the  blacks  made  it 
Si 


WILLIAM   LLOYD  GARRISON 

improbable  that  they  had  been  influenced  by 
any  sort  of  writings.  And  yet  one  cannot 
help  feeling  that  the  existence  of  a  militant 
propaganda  in  their  behalf  had  reached  the 
consciousness  of  the  slaves,  and  that  this 
rising  was  the  outcome  of  the  new  age. 
Angels'  wings  were  beating  upon  the  air, 
and  charging  it  with  both  life  and  death, 
till  even  dumb  slaves  felt  the  impulsion. 
Various  Southern  governors,  statesmen, 
and  newspapers  renewed  the  campaign 
against  the  Liberator,  and  Otis  was  again 
appealed  to. 

"  To  be  more  specific  in  our  object,"  says 
the  National  Intelligencer  which  was  pub 
lished  in  Washington,  and  was  one  of  the 
most  influential  journals  of  the  epoch,  "  we 
now  appeal  to  the  worthy  Mayor  of  the 
City  of  Boston,  whether  no  law  can  be 
found  to  prevent  the  publication,  in  the  city 
over  which  he  presides,  of  such  diabolical 
papers  (copies  of  the  Liberator)  as  we 
have  seen  a  sample  of  here  in  the  hands  of 
slaves,  and  of  which  there  are  many  in  cir 
culation  to  the  south  of  us.  We  have  no 
doubt  whatever  of  the  feelings  of  Mr.  Otis 
on  this  subject,  or  those  of  his  respectable 
constituents.  We  know  they  would  prompt 
him  and  them  to  arrest  the  instigator  of 
52 


THE    FIGURE 

human  butchery  in  his  mad  career.  We 
know  the  difficulty  which  surrounds  the 
subject,  because  the  nuisance  is  not  a  nui 
sance,  technically  speaking,  within  the  lim 
its  of  Massachusetts.  But,  surely,  if  the 
courts  of  law  have  no  power,  public  opin 
ion  has  to  interfere,  until  the  intelligent 
Legislature  of  Massachusetts  can  provide  a 
durable  remedy  for  this  most  appalling 
grievance.  .  .  ." 

Robert  Y.  Hayne  of  Columbia,  S.  C, 
begged  Otis  to  find  out  whether  Garrison 
had  mailed  him  (Hayne)  a  copy  of  the 
Liberator.  Otis  obsequiously  sent  a  deputy 
to  question  Garrison.  This  was  something 
very  like  a  prostitution  of  his  office  on  the 
part  of  Mayor  Otis;  because  what  Hayne 
wanted  was  to  obtain  evidence  to  be  used 
in  a  criminal  prosecution  of  Garrison.  Gar 
rison  at  once  becomes  the  able  constitutional 
lawyer. 

"  The  Hon.  Robert  Y.  Hayne  of  Colum 
bia,  S.  C./'  says  the  Liberator  of  October 
2Qth,  1831,  "  (through  the  medium  of  a 
letter),  wishes  to  know  of  the  Mayor  of 
Boston,  who  sent  a  number  of  the  Liberator 
to  him,  a  few  weeks  ago.  The  Mayor  of 
Boston  (through  the  medium  of  a  deputy) 
wishes  to  know  of  Mr.  Garrison  whether  he 
53 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

sent  the  aforesaid  number  to  the  aforesaid 
individual.  Mr.  Garrison  (through  the 
medium  of  his  paper)  wishes  to  know  of 
the  Hon.  Robert  Y.  Hayne  of  Columbia, 
S.  C.,  and  the  Mayor  of  Boston,  what 
authority  they  have  to  put  such  questions?  " 
We  can  see  in  this,  as  in  all  the  rest  of 
Garrison's  activity,  the  tactician  of  genius. 
We  can  see  also  the  inner  relation  between 
morality  and  constitutional  law,  which  ex 
ists  in  all  ages.  The  Reformer  is  always 
struggling  against  arbitrary  power.  He  in 
vokes  the  protection  of  some  law  or  cus 
tom  which  exists,  or  ought  to  exist.  In 
cases  where  this  law  or  custom  has  a  his 
toric  basis,  the  struggle  goes  on  in  the  form 
of  constitutional  law.  The  picture  of  the 
Reformer  is  always  the  picture  of  Courage 
and  of  Mercy:  the  courageous  man  who  is, 
by  his  conduct,  protecting  the  weak.  It  is 
this  vision  of  courage  and  mercy  in  opera 
tion,  that  melts  the  heart  and  inspires  new 
courage  and  mercy  in  the  beholder.  Here  is 
the  great  question  which  stands  behind  all  the 
details ;  for  courage  and  mercy  are  of  eternal 
importance.  That  is  why  we  hear  so  much 
of  Pym,  Hampden,  etc.  Their  conduct  has 
a  direct  relation  to  present  conditions.  No 
day  passes  in  which  every  man  is  not  put 

54 


THE    FIGURE 

to  the  test  many  times  over,  as  to  his  per 
sonal  relation  towards  the  cowardices  and 
cruelties  of  his  own  age. 

Major  Otis  saw  nothing  important  in  the 
episode  which  has  given  him  a  Dantesque 
immortality.  He  had  never  heard  of  the 
Liberator.  He  therefore,  procured  a  copy 
of  it. 

"  I  am  told,"  he  said,  "  that  it  is  sup 
ported  chiefly  by  the  free  colored  people ; 
that  the  number  of  subscribers  in  Balti 
more  and  Washington  exceeds  that  of  those 
in  this  city,  and  that  it  is  gratuitously  left 
at  one  or  two  of  the  reading  rooms  in  this 
place.  It  is  edited  by  an  individual  who 
formerly  lived  at  Baltimore,  where  his  feel 
ings  have  been  exasperated  by  some  occur 
rences  consequent  to  his  publications  there, 
on  topics  connected  with  the  condition  of 
slaves  in  this  country.  .  .  ." 

At  a  later  period  Otis  wrote: 

"  Some  time  afterward,  it  was  reported 
to  me  by  the  city  officers  that  they  had  fer 
reted  out  the  paper  and  its  editor;  that  his 
office  was  an  obscure  hole,  his  only  visible 
auxiliary  a  negro  boy,  and  his  supporters 
a  very  few  insignificant  persons  of  all  col 
ors.  This  information,  with  the  consent  of 
the  aldermen,  I  communicated  to  the  above- 
55 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

named  governors,  with  an  assurance  of  my 
belief  that  the  new  fanaticism  had  not  made, 
nor  was  likely  to  make,  proselytes  among 
the  respectable  classes  of  our  people.  In 
this,  however,  I  was  mistaken." 

History  has  left  us,  in  this  anecdote,  a  sil 
houette  of  Harrison  Gray  Otis,  one  of  Bos 
ton's  most  eminent  personages  at  that  time, 
—  the  representative  of  the  old  Puritan 
blood,  of  the  education,  wealth,  good  looks, 
social  prominence,  and  political  power  of 
Boston's  leaders.  In  how  short  a  time,  and 
with  how  easy  a  transformation  does  patriot 
turn  tyrant.  Here  is  the  nephew  of  James 
Otis,  hand  in  glove  with  the  iniquity  of  his 
age.  He  who  was  rocked  in  the  cradle  of 
liberty,  is  now  the  agent  of  the  Inquisition. 
And  he  is  perfectly  innocent.  He  is  a  mere 
toy  and  creature  of  his  time.  A  new  issue 
has  arisen  that  neither  he  nor  his  generation 
understand,  and  behold,  they  have  become 
oppressors. 

The  Hercules  that  is  to  save  mankind 
from  these  monsters  is  in  the  meanwhile 
working  fourteen  hours  a  day,  setting  type. 
The  Liberator  was  begun  without  a  dollar 
of  capital  and  without  a  single  subscriber. 
Garrison  and  his  partner,  Isaac  Knapp,  a 
young  white  man  equally  poor  and  equally 
56 


THE    FIGURE 

able  to  bear  privation,  composed,  set,  and 
printed  the  paper  themselves.  They  lived 
chiefly  upon  bread  and  milk,  a  few  cakes 
and  a  little  fruit,  obtained  from  the  baker's 
shop  opposite  and  from  a  petty  cake  and 
fruit  shop  in  the  basement.  "  I  was  often  at 
the  office  of  the  Liberator,"  wrote  the  Rev. 
James  C.  White.  "  I  knew  of  his  (Garri 
son's)  self-denials.  I  knew  he  slept  in  the 
office  with  a  table  for  a  bed,  a  book  for  a 
pillow,  and  a  self -prepared  scanty  meal  for 
his  rations  in  the  office,  while  he  set  up  his 
articles  in  the  Liberator  with  his  own  hand, 
and  without  previous  committal  to  paper." 

"  It  was  a  pretty  large  room,"  says  Jo- 
siah  Copley,  who  visited  it  in  the  winter  of 
1832-33,  "but  there  was  nothing  in  it  to 
relieve  its  dreariness  but  two  or  three  very 
common  chairs  and  a  pine  desk  in  the  cor 
ner,  at  which  a  pale,  delicate,  and  appar 
ently  over-tasked  gentleman  was  sitting. 

.  .  I  never  was  more  astonished.  All 
my  preconceptions  were  at  fault.  My  ideal 
of  the  man  was  that  of  a  stout,  rugged, 
dark-visaged  desperado  —  something  like 
we  picture  a  pirate.  He  was  a  quiet,  gen 
tle,  and  I  might  say  handsome  man  —  a 
gentleman  indeed,  in  every  sense  of  the 
word." 

57 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

"  The  dingy  walls ;  the  small  windows, 
bespattered  with  printer's  ink;  the  press 
standing  in  one  corner;  the  composing- 
stands  opposite ;  the  long  editorial  and  mail 
ing  table,  covered  with  newspapers ;  the  bed 
of  the  editor  and  publisher  on  the  floor- — 
all  these/'  says  Oliver  Johnson,  "  make  a 
picture  never  to  be  forgotten." 


IV 

PICTURES    OF   THE 
STRUGGLE 

THERE  are  pages  in  the  memoirs  of  Anti- 
slavery  that  shine  with  a  light  which  sancti 
fies  this  continent,  and  which  will  be  un- 
diminished  a  thousand  years  hence.  Nay, 
it  will  shine  more  clearly  then  than  now; 
for  we  are  still  living  in  the  valley  of  the 
shadow  of  death. 

The  war  followed  so  quickly  upon  the 
true  awakening  of  the  nation  as  to  the  na 
ture  of  slavery  that  those  early  watchers, 
whose  cries  had  aroused  us,  were  still  in 
Coventry;  they  were  still  held  to  be  odious, 
although  their  piercing  appeal  had  put  life 
and  religion  into  all  The  North  died  for 
the  slave,  with  condemnation  of  the  Aboli 
tionist  upon  its  lips.  This  paradoxical  out 
come  was  due  to  the  rapidity  with  which 
events  moved  during  the  final  crisis.  A 
revolution  may  be  studied  in  its  origins,  and 
may  be  comprehended  through  its  results; 
but  during  the  actual  cascade  that  leads  from 
the  one  epoch  to  the  other,  scene  succeeds 
59 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

scene  with  such  fury  that  history  becomes 
unintelligible.  In  the  years  that  intervened 
between  the  Kansas  troubles  and  the  out 
break  of  the  war,  so  many  things  happened 
at  once  that  all  issues  and  all  feelings  were 
telescoped  together.  There  followed  the 
picturesque  horrors  and  scenes  of  war-time ; 
there  followed  the  new  patriotism,  the  new 
heroes,  the  New  Legend, — >all  of  it  so 
vivid,  so  drenched  in  grief,  so  glorified 
by  honor,  so  informed  with  the  mean 
ing  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  that 
the  immediate  past  was  belittled.  The 
Abolitionists  thus  passed  straight  from 
the  odium  of  people  preaching  unpleasant 
truth  to  the  odium  of  people  proclaim 
ing  what  everybody  knows.  They  have  never 
had  a  heyday.  Their  cause  triumphed 
but  not  they  themselves.  They  still  re 
main  under  a  cloud  in  America,  and 
are  regarded  with  some  distrust  by  the 
historian  and  by  the  common  man.  I 
can  scarcely  find  a  man  who  sees  in  these 
early  Abolitionists,  as  I  do,  the  lamp  and 
light  of  the  whole  after-coming  epoch. 
Perhaps  our  age  is  still  too  near  to  theirs  to 
do  it  justice;  and  the  mere  flight  of  time 
may  bring  men  to  a  truer  perspective  of  th6 
whole  matter. 

60 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

Religious  animosities  do  not  die  out  in 
a  moment.     Many  of  us  still  feel  a  lambent 
and  rising  heat  course  through  our  veins 
in    reading    the    history    of    the    religious 
wars  of  three  centuries  ago.     This  is  be 
cause  those  wars  have  come  down  in  fam 
ily    life,    and    are    thus    a    part    of    the 
intimate  personal  history  of  men.     So  of 
this  just-buried  cause,  Abolition.     Consider 
how  the  American  of  to-day  reads  the  Con 
stitutional  History  of  the  years  before  the 
war.     Nullification,  the  Texas  scheme,  the 
Mexican  War,  the  Repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,     the     Kansas     troubles, —  all 
these  things  and  every  subsidiary  foreign 
or  domestic  issue  in  our  annals,  are  interest 
ing  to  us  because  we  feel  so  intimately  the 
hot    place    in    each    one    of    them.     Part 
of  this  heat  comes  from  prejudice  and  ac 
cident,  part  of  it  from  the  central  focus  of 
truth;  and  we  cannot  always  be  sure  which 
kind  it  is  that  burns  in  us.     But  there  is  a 
species    of   glow   that   can   be    trusted.     It 
comes  to  us  when  we  read  accounts  of  hero 
ism.     Tales  of  noble  self-sacrifice  never  re 
main  mere  adjuncts  to  a  creed,  or  portions 
of  a  partisan  tradition.     They   contain  in 
themselves  the  whole  of  salvation.     Poster 
ity  will  recur  to  the  age  of  the  Anti-slavery 
61 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

movement  in  order  to  find  there  those  little 
digests  of  human  nature  which  are  true  to 
all  time.  Here  are  the  gems  in  the  treas 
ury  of  a  nation's  life;  and  it  matters  not  to 
later  ages  whether  the  geological  strata  in 
which  they  lie  embedded  be  Catholic  or 
Protestant,  Christian  or  pagan,  political  or 
religious. 

Whenever  a  reform  movement  is  started 
in  this  world  and  is  making  headway,  the 
evils  which  it  threatens  instinctively  strive 
to  gain  control  over  it.     We  see  this  every 
day  in  our  local  citizens'  movements,  which 
always     begin     by     sincere     activity,     and 
almost  always  grow  effete  through  capture 
by  the  politicians.     Our  civil  service  asso 
ciations   tend   to   become   absorbed   by  the 
political  parties,  who  man  them  with  paid 
officials,  and  run  up  the  expenses  till  the 
cure  has  become  a  part  of  the  disease.     This 
oscillation  between  reform  and  absorption 
goes  on  ceaselessly;  and  the  young  prophet 
always  finds  himself  obliged  to  attack  and 
destroy    some    sham    reform    association, 
bearing  a  fine  name,  before  he  can  get  at 
the  real  evil.     Let  us  note  this  also;  that  a 
somnolent  and  inactive  reform  association, 
with  a  fine  name,  and  an  aroma  of  original 
benevolence  about  it,   and  perhaps  even   a 
62 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

superficially  good  record,  is  the  very  sort  of 
association  to  attract  respectable,  rich,  lazy, 
and  conservative  people. 

The  Colonization  Society  in  1830  pre 
sented  an  extreme  case  of  sham  reform. 
It  had  been  started  in  1816  in  Virginia,  with 
the  avowed  object  of  transporting  free  ne 
groes  to  Africa.  It  had  been  pushed  with 
diligence  and  paraded  as  the  cure  for  the 
evils  of  slavery,  and  its  benevolence  was  as 
sumed  on  all  hands.  Everybody  of  conse 
quence  belonged  to  it.  Garrison,  himself, 
joined  it  in  good  faith.  This  Colonization 
Society  had,  by  an  invisible  process,  half 
conscious,  half  unconscious,  been  trans 
formed  into  a  serviceable  organ  and  mem 
ber  of  the  Slave  Power.  In  order  to  in 
vestigate  the  real  functions  of  this  society, 
Garrison,  in  1831,  obtained  from  its  head 
quarters  at  Washington,  the  files  of  its  doc 
uments  and  of  its  newspaper,  the  African 
Repository. 

"  The  result  of  his  labors,"  says  Oliver 
Johnson,  "  was  seen  in  a  bulky  pamphlet, 
that  came  from  the  press  in  the  spring,  en 
titled  'Thoughts  on  African  Colonization; 
or,  an  Impartial  Exhibition  of  the  Doc 
trines,  Principles  and  Purposes  of  the 
American  Colonization  Society;  together 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

with  the  Resolutions,  Addresses  and  Re 
monstrances  of  the  Free  People  of  Color/ 
As  a  compilation  of  facts  and  authorities  it 
was  unanswerable  and  overwhelming.  It 
condemned  the  Colonization  Society  out  of 
its  own  mouth,  and  by  a  weight  of  evidence 
that  was  irresistible.  There  was  just 
enough  of  comment  to  elucidate  the  testi 
mony  from  official  sources  and  bring  it 
within  the  comprehension  of  the  simplest 
reader.  His  indictment  contained  ten  aver 
ments,  viz. :  i,  The  American  Colonization 
Society  is  pledged  not  to  oppose  the  system 
of  slavery;  2,  It  apologizes  for  slavery  and 
slave-holders;  3,  It  recognizes  slaves  as 
property;  4,  It  increases  the  value  of  slaves; 

5,  It  is  the  enemy  of  immediate  abolition; 

6,  It  is  nourished  by  fear  and  selfishness; 

7,  It  aims  at  the  utter  expulsion  of  the 
blacks;  8,  It  is  the  disparager  of  the  free 
blacks ;  9,  It  denies  the  possibility  of  elevat 
ing  the  blacks  in  this  country;   10,  It  de 
ceives  and  misleads  the  Nation.     Each  of 
these  averments  was  supported  by  pages  of 
citations  from  the  annual  reports  of  the  so 
ciety,  from  the  pages  of  its  official  organ, 
the    African    Repository,    and    from    the 
speeches    of    its   leading   champions    in   all 
parts  of  the  country.     It  was  impossible  to 

64 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

set  this  evidence  aside,  and  equally  so  to  re 
sist  the  conclusions  drawn  therefrom.  The 
work  could  not  be,  and  therefore  was  not 
answered^ 

The  book  made  a  tremendous  sensation 
and  became  the  arsenal  of  the  Abolitionists  in 
this  country  and  oi4heir  exponents  abroad. 
"  It  was  early  inU85^I  think,"  says  Elizur 
Wright,  "that  Mr.  Garrison  struck  the 
greatest  blow  of  his  life  —  or  any  man's 
life  —  by  publishing  in  a  thick  pamphlet, 
with  all  the  emphasis  that  a  printer  knows 
how  to  give  to  types,  his  Thoughts  on  Col 
onization."  The  Colonization  Society  was 
an  embodiment  of  the  public  consciousness. 
It  was  prevalent,  it  was  a  part  of  the  peo 
ple's  daily  life.  All  the  great  divines  be 
longed  to  it,  all  the  academic  bigwigs,  so 
cial  figure-heads  and  moneyed  men.  And 
yet,  in  fact,  Colonization  was  a  sort  of  ob 
scene  dragon  that  lay  before  the  Palace  of 
Slavery  to  devour  or  corrupt  all  assailants. 
Garrison  attacked  it  like  Perseus,  with  a 
ferocity  which  to  this  day  is  thrilling.  His 
eyes,  his  words,  and  his  sword  flash  and 
glitter.  And  he  slew  it.  He  cut  off  its 
supplies,  he  destroyed  its  reputation  in  Eu 
rope;  and  he  thereby  opened  the  path  be 
tween  the  Abolition  movement  and  the  con- 
65 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

science  of  America.  Nothing  he  ever  did 
was  more  able.  Nothing  that  Frederick 
the  Great,  Washington  or  Napoleon  ever 
did  in  the  field  of  war  was  more  brilliant 
than  this  political  foray  of  Garrison,  then 
at  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  upon  the  key- 
position  and  jugular  vein  of  slavery. 
Among  the  immediate  consequences^of 
on  colonization  was 


the  contest  over  Lane  Seminary  at  ""Cin 
cinnati,  a  conTe~sT~wtiic^^ 
center  of  Abolition  influence  for  a  year,  and 
qualified  public  opinion  ever  after.  I  quote 
part  of  the  account  given  by  Oliver  John 
son  from  his  well-known  volume  on  Gar 
rison  and  his  time,  —  from  which  many  of 
these  illustrations  are  taken.  Johnson  was 
a  right-hand  man  of  Garrison's  and  at 
times  was  editor  and  co-editor  of  the  Lib 
erator.  He  gave  up  his  life  to  Anti-slavery, 
and  is  a  fair  example  of  the  sort  of  man 
who  came  into  existence,  as  if  by  miracle, 
when  Garrison  stamped  his  foot  in  1830. 

"  The  founding  of  Lane  Seminary,  at  the 
gateway  of  the  great  West,  was  a  part  of 
this  plan,  to  extend  the  influence  of  Ortho 
doxy,  and  Dr.  Beecher,*  being  generally 

*  Rev.    Lyman    Beecher,    father   of    Henry    Ward 
Beecher  and  of  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe. 
66 


PICTURES   OF   THE   STRUGGLE 

recognized  as  the  leader  of  New  England 
Revivalism,  and  the  strongest  representa 
tive  of  the  advanced  school  of  Orthodoxy 
at  that  day,  Mr.  Tappan  thought  that  he 
of  all  others  was  the  man  best  fitted  to  train 
a  body  of  ministers  for  the  new  field.  The 
Doctor,  after  considerable  delay,  and  to  the 
great  grief  of  his  Boston  church,  accepted 
the  appointment.  Such  was  his  fame  that 
a  large  class  of  students,  of  unusual  ma 
turity  of  judgment  and  ripeness  of  Chris 
tian  experience,  was  at  once  attracted  to  the 
Seminary.  In  the  literary  and  theological 
departments  together,  they  numbered  about 
one  hundred  and  ten.  Eleven  of  these  were 
from  different  slave  States;  seven  were 
sons  of  slaveholders;  one  was  himself  a 
slaveholder,  and  one  had  purchased  his  free 
dom  from  cruel  bondage  by  the  payment  of 
a  large  sum  of  money,  which  he  had  earned 
by  extra  labor.  Besides  these  there  were 
ten  others  who  had  resided  for  longer  or 
shorter  periods  in  the  slave  States,  and 
made  careful  observation  of  the  character 
and  workings  of  slavery.  The  youngest 
of  these  students  was  nineteen  years  of  age; 
most  of  those  in  the  theological  department 
were  more  than  twenty-six,  and  several 
were  over  thirty.  Most  if  not  all  of  them 
67 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

had  been  converted  in  the  revivals  of  that 
period,  and  were  filled  with  the  revival  spirit 
in  which  Dr.  Beecher  so  much  delighted. 
A  more  earnest  and  devoted  band  of  stu 
dents  was  probably  never  gathered  in  any 
theological  seminary.  The  Doctor  had 
great  pride  as  well  as  confidence  in  them." 

The  students  in  this  Seminary  at  Cincin 
nati  were  planning'  to  form  a  Colonization 
Society,  and  Garrison's  pamphlet  being  in  the 
air,  its  arguments  were  being  used  to  op 
pose the  plan!  The  students  therefore 

organized  a  nine  days'  solemn  debate 
upon  the  whole  matter,  with  the  result 
that  Garrison  and  Immediate  Emanci 
pation  carried  the  day.  In  the  meantime 
the  country  at  large  took  an  interest  in  the 
affair,  and  the  press  assailed  the  Seminary 
as  a  hotbed  of  Abolition.  Dr.  Lyman 
Beecher  and  the  trustees  were  harried  and 
threatened.  The  hearts  of  the  Abolition 
ists  were  stirred  to  the  depths. 

"  In  every  part  of  the  free  States,"  says 
Oliver  Johnson,  "  there  were  Christian  men 
and  godly  women  not  a  few,  who  prayed  to 
God  night  and  day  that  Lyman  Beecher 
might  be  imbued  with  strength  and  courage 
to  stand  up  nobly  in  the  face  of  the  storm 
that  raged  around  him,  and  maintain  the 
68 


PICTURES   OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

right  of  his  pupils,  as  candidates  for  the 
Christian  ministry,  to  investigate  and  dis 
cuss  the  subject  of  slavery,  and  to  bear  their 
testimony  against  it  as  a  sin,  and  a  mighty 
hindrance  to  the  spread  of  the  Gospel/' 

At  last,  the  trustees  of  the  Seminary, 
thinking  to  avoid  the  danger,  forbade  the 
students  to  discuss  slavery  at  all, —  even  in 
private.  The  outcome  was  that  seventy  or 
eighty  students  resigned  in  a  body.  The 
institution  was  disgraced  and  wrecked;  it 
never  recovered  from  the  experience.  The 
greatest  result  of  the  episode,  however,  was 
this,  that  the  young  men  who  resigned  be 
came,  by  force  of  circumstances,  something 
like  public  characters.  Their  first  step  was 
a  public  one, —  into  the  arena.  They  issued 
an  appeal  to  the  Christian  public,  and  many 
of  them  went  out  into  the  world  as  protag 
onists  of  Abolition. 

Here  was  a  miraculous  draught  indeed; 
for,  of  course,  among  them  were  men  of 
mark;  and  Theodore  D.  Weld,  the  ring 
leader,  was,  as  Johnson  says,  the  peer  of 
Beecher  himself  in  native  ability.  Thus 
burst  a  seed-pod  of  Abolition.  This  propa- 
gative  influence  had  been  in  Garrison's 
pamphlet.  That  pamphlet  evoked,  it  elicited, 
it  agitated.  .When  we  come  later  to  review 
69 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

Garrison's  writings,  let  us  remember  what 
these  writings  accomplished.  Let  us  re 
member  that,  however  tedious  this  pamphlet 
on  Colonization  may  seem  to  us,  however 
dead  it  may  fall,  under  criticism,  to-day,  it 
had  this  life-giving  quality  in  its  own  time. 
Another  of  the  early  picturesque  episodes 
of  Anti-slavery  history  was  the  case  of  Pru 
dence  Crandall.  It  set  the  world  ringing, 
and  caused  new  champions  to  step  forward, 
fully  armed,  out  of  that  mystical  wood 
which  ever  fringes  the  open  lawns  where 
heroes  are  at  combat. 

I  again  quote  from  Oliver  Johnson: 
"  In  1832,  Prudence  Crandall,  a  Quaker 
young  woman  of  high  character,  established 
in  Canterbury,  Windham  County,  Conn.,  a 
school  for  young  ladies.  Now  there  was 
in  that  town  a  respectable  colored  farmer 
named  Harris,  who  had  a  daughter,  a  bright 
girl  of  seventeen,  who,  having  passed  cred 
itably  through  one  of  the  district  schools, 
desired  to  qualify  herself  to  be  a  teacher  of 
colored  children.  She  was  a  girl  of  pleas 
ing  appearance  and  manners,  a  member  of 
the  Congregational  church,  and  of  a  hue 
not  darker  than  that  of  some  persons  who 
pass  for  white.  Miss  Crandall,  good 
Quaker  that  she  was,  admitted  this  girl  to 
70 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

her  school.  The  pupils,  some  of  whom  had 
been  associated  with  her  in  the  district 
school,  made  no  objection;  but  some  of  the 
parents  were  offended,  and  demanded  the 
removal  of  the  dark-skinned  pupil.  Miss 
Crandall  made  a  strong  appeal  in  behalf 
of  the  girl,  and  did  her  best  to  overcome  the 
prejudices  of  the  objectors,  but  in  vain. 
After  reflection  she  came  to  the  conclusion, 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  to  open  her  school  to 
other  girls  of  a  dark  complexion.  The  an 
nouncement  of  her  purpose  threw  the  whole 
town  into  a  ferment.  A  town-meeting  was 
held  in  the  Congregational  church,  and  so 
fierce  was  the  excitement  that  the  Rev. 
Samuel  J.  May  and  Mr.  Arnold  Buffum, 
the  Quaker  President  of  the  New  England 
Anti-Slavery  Society,  who  had  been  deputed 
by  Miss  Crandall  to  speak  for  her,  were 
denied  a  hearing." 

Why  has  this  woman  no  tablet?  Will 
the  annals  of  Canterbury,  Connecticut,  show 
a  more  heroic  figure  during  the  next  thou 
sand  years, —  that  the  hamlet  waits  to  cele 
brate  its  patron  saint?  Had  Prduence 
Crandall  lived  in  the  time  of  Diocletian,  or 
in  the  time  of  Savonarola,  or  in  the  time 
of  Garibaldi,  she  would  have  had  a  shrine 
to  which  Americans  would  have  flocked  to- 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

day.  Not  without  immense  influence  was 
the  stand  she  made.  It  cost  two  years  of 
struggle,  during  which  the  Slave  Power,  as 
we  have  seen,  passed  such  bills  to  suppress 
her  as,  in  the  rebound,  weakened  its  hold 
on  the  people  of  the  North.  We  now  find  it 
hard  to  imagine  that,  in  1834,  it  should 
have  been  a  crime  in  Connecticut  to  give 
primary  education  to  colored  girls.  Yet 
such  was  the  case.  Prudence  Crandall  was 
indicted. 

At  her  first  trial  there  was  a  disagreement 
of  the  jury.  Upon  the  second  she  was  con 
victed.  An  appeal  was  thereupon  taken 
and  was  followed  by  a  disagreement  among 
the  judges.  Thereafter  the  matter  was  al 
lowed  to  drop,  through  the  finding  of  a 
flaw  in  the  indictment.  All  this,  however, 
was  not  done  in  a  corner,  nor  without  the 
indignation  of  all  warm-hearted  people,  nor 
without  the  exhibition  of  splendid  legal 
ability  on  both  sides  of  the  contest.  Im 
portant  law-suits  were  the  bull-fights  of 
America  before  the  war.  This  one  called 
into  being  a  new  local  newspaper,  supported 
by  Arthur  Tappan,  because  the  existing  pa 
pers  would  publish  only  the  Pro-slavery  side 
of  the  contest.  It  called  into  activity  also 
several  new  propagandists  of  the  first  order, 
72 


PICTURES   OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

including  C.  C.  Burleigh,  who  was  turned 
from  the  career  of  a  brilliant  advocate  and 
was  transformed  for  life  into  an  evangelist 
of  liberty,  through  the  courage  of  this 
woman.  Her  story  showed  the  lengths  to 
which  the  Slave  Power  not  only  would  but 
could  go  at  the  North,  and  gave  a  glance 
into  the  burning  pit,  which  even  casual  and 
callous  persons  could  not  forget. 

It  was  while  this  long  contest  was  in 
progress  that  the  National  Anti-slavery  So 
ciety  was  formed  by  a  meeting  at  Phila 
delphia  of  about  sixty  Abolitionists,  from 
eleven  states.  How  young  these  men  were 
may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that  forty-five 
of  them  survived  to  witness  the  emancipa 
tion  of  the  slaves  thirty  years  later.  I 
quote  a  few  paragraphs  from  Samuel  J. 
May's  reminiscences,  which  picture  the  state 
of  mind  of  these  men  as  their  deliberations 
of  several  days  drew  to  a  close.  The  men 
had,  for  the  most  part,  never  seen  each 
other  before  this  meeting.  A  declaration 
of  principles  had  been  prepared. 

"  Between  twelve  and  one  o'clock,"  says 
Mr.  May,  "  we  repaired  with  the  Declara 
tion  to  the  hall.  Edwin  P.  Atlee,  the  chair 
man,  read  it  to  the  Convention.  Never  in 
my  life  have  I  seen  a  deeper  impression 
73 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

made  by  words  than  was  made  by  that  ad 
mirable  document  upon  all  who  were  there 
present.  .  .  . 

"  At  the  suggestion  of  an  Orthodox 
brother,  and  without  a  vote  of  the  Conven 
tion,  our  President  himself,  then  an  Ortho 
dox  minister,  readily  condescended  to  the 
scruples  of  our  Quaker  brethren,  so  far  as 
not  to  call  upon  any  individual  to  offer 
prayer;  but  at  the  opening  of  our  sessions 
each  day  he  gave  notice  that  a  portion  of 
time  would  be  spent  in  prayer.  Any  one 
prayed  aloud  who  was  moved  to  do  so.  It 
was  at  the  suggestion  also  of  an  Orthodox 
member  that  we  agreed  to  dispense  with  all 
titles,  civil  or  ecclesiastical.  Accordingly, 
you  will  not  find  in  the  published  minutes  of 
the  Convention  appendages  to  any  names, — 
neither  D.  D.,  nor  Rev.,  nor  Hon.,  nor  Esq., 
—  no,  not  even  plain  Mr.  We  met  as  fel 
low-men,  in  the  cause  of  suffering  fellow- 
men.  .  .  . 

"  I  cannot  describe  the  holy  enthusiasm 
which  lighted  up  every  face  as  we  gathered 
around  the  table  on  which  the  Declaration 
lay,  to  put  our  names  to  that  sacred  instru 
ment.  It  seemed  to  me  that  every  man's 
heart  was  in  his  hand, —  as  if  every  one 
felt  that  he  was  about  to  offer  himself  a 
74 


PICTURES   OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

living  sacrifice  in  the  cause  of  freedom,  and 
to  do  it  cheerfully.  There  are  moments 
when  heart  touches  heart,  and  souls  flow 
into  one  another.  That  was  such  a  moment. 
I  was  in  them  and  they  in  me;  we  were  all 
one.  There  was  no  need  that  each  should 
tell  the  other  how  he  felt  and  what  he 
thought,  for  we  were  in  each  other's  bos 
oms.  I  am  sure  there  was  not,  in  all  our 
hearts,  the  thought  of  ever  making  violent, 
much  less  mortal,  defense  of  the  liberty  of 
speech,  or  the  freedom  of  the  press,  or  of 
our  own  persons,  though  we  foresaw  that 
they  all  would  be  grievously  outraged. 
Our  President,  Beriah  Green,  in  his  ad 
mirable  closing  speech,  gave  utterance  to 
what  we  all  felt  and  intended  should  be  our 
course  of  conduct.  He  distinctly  foretold 
the  obloquy,  the  despiteful  treatment,  the 
bitter  persecution,  perhaps  even  the  cruel 
deaths  we  were  going  to  encounter  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  undertaking  to  which  we 
had  bound  our  selves. " 

The  age  played  its  part  quite  handsomely 
in  apportioning  persecution  to  the  new 
preachers  of  the  Gospel.  The  case  of  Amos 
Dresser  may  be  cited  as  a  sample  from 
Oliver  Johnson: 

"  Amos  Dresser,  a  young  theological  stu- 
75 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

dent  (a  native  of  Berkshire  County,  Mass.), 
went  to  Nashville,  Tenn.,  in  the  summer  of 
1835,  to  sell  the  'Cottage  Bible/  His 
crime  was  that  he  was  a  member  of  an  anti- 
slavery  society,  and  that  he  had  some  anti- 
slavery  tracts  in  his  trunk.  For  this  he 
was  flogged  in  the  public  square  of  the  city, 
under  the  direction  of  a  Vigilance  Commit 
tee,  composed  of  the  most  distinguished  cit 
izens,  some  of  them  prominent  members  of 
churches.  He  received  twenty  lashes  on 
the  bare  back  from  a  cowskin.  On  the 
previous  Sunday  he  had  received  the  bread 
and  wine  of  the  communion  from  the  hands 
of  one  of  the  members  of  that  Vigilance 
Committee!  Another  member  of  the  Com 
mittee  was  a  prominent  Methodist,  whose 
house  was  the  resort  of  the  preachers  and 
bishops  of  his  denomination." 

Now  Dresser  was  a  Massachusetts  man. 
One  wonders  how  the  slaveholders  would 
have  behaved  if  a  Southerner  had,  for  any 
cause  whatever,  been  treated  in  Massachu 
setts  as  Dresser  was  treated  in  Tennessee. 
But  the  North  made  no  complaints.  It  is 
incredible  —  and  this  is  the  difficulty  which 
the  whole  epoch  presents  to  us, —  it  is  in 
credible  that  the  earth  should  ever  have  nur 
tured  such  a  race  of  cowards  as  the  dom- 
76 


PICTURES   OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

inant  classes  in  our  Northern  States  seem 
to  have  been.  And  yet  we  know  they  were 
no  worse,  nor  very  different  from  other 
persons  recorded  in  history;  they  furnish 
merely  an  acute,  recent  example  of  how 
self-interest  can  corrupt  character,  of  how 
tyranny  can  delude  intellect.  The  suffer 
ings  of  such  persons  as  Dresser  are  never 
lost.  It  required  just  such  exhibitions  as 
this  to  make  the  North  see  to  what  depths 
it  had  sunk.  For  many  years,  however,  the 
North  could  draw  no  inference  from  such 
cases,  except  this:  —  that  persons  like 
Dresser  were  misguided  fools,  who  inter 
fered  with  matters  best  left  alone. 

The  next  picture  must  be  of  another  kind. 
It  shall  be  of  the  young  Puritan  divine, 
Samuel  J.  May,  a  descendant  of  the  Sewalls 
and  Quincys  and  of  all  that  Eighteenth  Cen 
tury  New  England  aristocracy  of  learning 
and  virtue,  which  seems  to  have  dwindled 
and  withered  in  a  single  generation, 
and  left, —  except  for  one  or  two  bright 
spirits, —  nothing  but  shadow-characters, 
and  feeble-natured  persons  on  the  stage. 
The  occasion  of  May's  conversion  was 
Garrison's  first  Boston  address,  which 
was  given  in  1830  in  Julien  Hall,  the  hall 
being  lent  for  the  purpose  by  an  associa- 
77 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

tion  of  avowed  infidels.  Garrison  had  but 
recently  denounced  the  principles  of  these 
men ;  for  at  this  time  he  was  intensely  ortho 
dox.  The  lesson  in  charity  he  thus  re 
ceived  from  opponents  must  have  been 
salutary,  even  to  him.  The  whole  inci 
dent,  including  May's  conversion,  shows 
how  closely  knitted  together  are  all  the  lib 
eral  impulses  in  a  community.  At  this 
time  May  was  thirty-three.  His  family  be 
sought  him  to  shun  the  new  fanaticism ;  but 
he  put  their  counsels  gently  aside.  May  is 
the  angel  of  Anti-slavery.  He  gives  the 
following  account  of  his  conversion: 

"Presently  the  young  man  (Garrison) 
arose,  modestly,  but  with  an  air  of  calm 
determination,  and  delivered  such  a  lec 
ture  as  he  only,  I  believe,  at  that  time,  could 
have  written;  for  he  only  had  had  his  eyes 
so  anointed  that  he  could  see  that  outrages 
perpetrated  upon  Africans  were  wrongs 
done  to  our  common  humanity;  he  only,  I 
believe,  had  had  his  ears  so  completely  un 
stopped  of  '  prejudice  against  color  '  that 
the  cries  of  enslaved  black  men  and  black 
women  sounded  to  him  as  if  they  came  from 
brothers  and  sisters. 

"  He  began  with  expressing  deep  regret 
and  shame  for  the  zeal  he  had  lately  mani- 
78 


PICTURES   OF   THE   STRUGGLE 

fested  in  the  Colonization  cause.  It  was, 
he  confessed,  a  zeal  without  knowledge. 
He  had  been  deceived  by  the  misrepresenta 
tions  so  diligently  given,  throughout  the 
free  States  by  Southern  agents,  of  the  de 
sign  and  tendency  of  the  Colonization 
scheme.  During  his  few  months'  residence 
in  Maryland  he  had  been  completely  unde 
ceived.  He  had  there  found  out  that  the 
design  of  those  who  originated,  and  the  es 
pecial  intentions  of  those  in  the  Southern 
States  that  engaged  in  the  plan,  were  to  re 
move  from  the  country,  as  '  a  disturbing 
element '  in  slaveholding  communities,  all 
the  free  colored  people,  so  that  the  bondmen 
might  the  more  easily  be  held  in  subjection. 
He  exhibited  in  graphic  sketches  and  glow 
ing  colors  the  suffering  of  the  enslaved,  and 
denounced  the  plan  of  Colonization  as  de 
vised  and  adapted  to  perpetuate  the  system, 
and  intensify  the  wrongs  of  American 
slavery,  and  therefore  utterly  undeserving 
of  the  patronage  of  lovers  of  liberty  and 
friends  of  humanity. 

"  Never  befonTwas  I  so  affected  by  the 
speech  of  man.  When  he  had  ceased  speak 
ing  I  said  to  those  around  me :  '  That  is  a 
providential  man;  he  is  a  prophet;  he  will 
shake  our  nation  to  its  center,  but  he  will 
79 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

shake  slavery  out  of  it.  We  ought  to  know 
him,  we  ought  to  help  him.  Come,  let  us 
go  and  give  him  our  hands/  Mr.  Sewall 
and  Mr.  Alcott  went  up  with  me,  and  we 
introduced  each  other.  I  said  to  him :  '  Mr. 
Garrison,  I  am  not  sure  that  I  can  indorse 
all  you  have  said  this  evening.  Much  of  it 
requires  careful  consideration.  But  I  am 
prepared  to  embrace  you.  I  am  sure  you 
are  called  to  a  great  work  and  I  mean  to 
help  you/  ' 

With  a  mind  as  acute  as  a  lawyer's,  and 
a  spirit  as  unselfish  as  a  seraph's,  May 
plunged  into  the  cause.  It  is  he  who  ap 
peared  upon  the  scene  to  protect  and  to  repre 
sent  Prudence  Crandall  at  the  meeting 
of  her  townsfolk  which  it  was  not  safe  for 
her  to  attend.  It  is  he  who  has  left  us  the 
best  short  book  on  the  early  years  of  the 
movement,  from  which  book  many  of  these 
illustrations  are  taken.  He  was  of  milder 
speech  than  Garrison.  "  O  my  friend," 
cried  May  at  the  close  of  an  expostulation 
with  Garrison,  "  do  try  to  moderate  your 
indignation,  and  keep  more  cool;  why,  you 
are  all  on  fire."  Garrison  stopped,  laid  his 
hand  on  May's  shoulder  with  a  kind  but 
emphatic  pressure,  and  said  slowly: 
"  Brother  May,  I  have  need  to  be  all  on  fire, 
80 


PICTURES   OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

for  I  have  mountains  of  ice  about  me  to 
melt."  "From  that  time  to  this,"  adds 
Mr.  May,  "  I  have  never  said  a  word  to 
Mr.  Garrison  in  complaint  of  his  style.  I 
am  more  than  half  satisfied  that  he  was 
right  then,  and  we  who  objected  were  mis 
taken." 

May  was  not  so  political-minded  as  Gar 
rison;  he  had  not  Garrison's  strategic  un 
derstanding  of  the  fight,  nor  Garrison's  gift 
of  becoming  the  central  whirpool  of  idea  and 
of  persecution.  But  he  was  the  diviner  spirit 
of  the  two.  I  do  not  think  Garrison  could 
have  made  the  following  appeal.  It  moves 
in  a  region  of  humility  which  is  foreign  to 
Garrison's  nature,  to  his  tactics  and  to  his 
genius.  Dr.  Channing  had  been  a  family 
friend  of  the  Mays,  and  had  been  particu 
larly  kind  to  Samuel  when  the  latter  was  a 
small  boy.  This  affectionate  relationship 
had  never  been  shaken.  The  story  must  be 
told  by  May  himself. 

"  Late  in  the  year  1834,"  says  Mr.  May, 
"  being  on  a  visit  in  Boston,  I  spent  several 
hours  with  Dr.  Channing  in  earnest  conver 
sation  upon  Abolitionism  and  Abolitionists. 
My  habitual  reverence  for  him  was  such 
that  I  had  always  been  apt  to  defer  per 
haps  too  readily  to  his  opinions,  or  not  to 
81 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

make  a  very  stout  defense  of  my  own  when 
they  differed  from  his.  But  at  the  time  to 
which  I  refer  I  had  become  so  thoroughly 
convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  essential  doc 
trines  of  the  American  Anti-slavery  Society, 
and  so  earnestly  engaged  in  the  dissemina 
tion  of  them  that  our  conversation  assumed, 
more  than  it  had  ever  done,  the  character 
of  a  debate.  He  acknowledged  the  ines 
timable  importance  of  the  object  we  had  in 
view.  The  evils  of  Slavery,  he  assented, 
could  not  be  overstated.  He  allowed  that 
removal  to  Africa  ought  not  to  be  made 
a  condition  of  the  liberation  of  the  enslaved. 
But  he  hesitated  still  to  accept  the  doctrine 
of  immediate  emancipation.  His  principal 
objections,  however,  were  alleged  against 
the  severity  of  our  denunciations,  the 
harshness  of  our  epithets,  the  vehemence, 
heat,  and  excitement  caused  by  the  ha 
rangues  at  our  meetings,  and  still  more  by 
Mr.  Garrison's  Liberator.  The  Doctor 
dwelt  upon  these  objections,  which,  if  they 
were  as  well  founded  as  he  assumed  them 
to  be,  lay  against  what  was  only  incidental, 
not  an  essential  part  of  our  movement.  He 
dwelt  upon  them  until  I  became  impa 
tient,  and,  forgetting  for  the  moment  my 
wonted  deference,  I  broke  out  with  not  a 
82 


PICTURES  OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

little  warmth  of  expression  and  manner: 
"  '  Dr.  Channing,5  I  said,  '  I  am  tired  of 
these  complaints.  The  cause  of  suffering 
humanity,  the  cause  of  our  oppressed, 
crushed  colored  countrymen,  has  called  as 
loudly  upon  others  as  upon  us  Abolitionists. 
It  was  just  as  incumbent  upon  others  as 
upon  us  to  espouse  it.  We  are  not  to  blame 
that  wiser  and  better  men  did  not  espouse 
it  long  ago.  The  cry  of  millions,  suffering 
the  cruel  bondage  in  our  land,  had  been 
heard  for  half  a  century  and  disregarded. 
"  The  wise  and  prudent  "  saw  the  terrible 
wrong,  but  thought  it  not  wise  and  prudent 
to  lift  a  finger  for  its  correction.  The 
priests  and  Levites  beheld  their  robbed  and 
wounded  countrymen,  but  passed  by  on  the 
other  side.  The  children  of  Abraham  held 
their  peace,  and  at  last  "  the  very  stones 
have  cried  out "  in  abhorrence  of  this  tre 
mendous  iniquity;  and  you  must  expect 
them  to  cry  out  like  "  the  stones."  You 
must  not  wonder  if  many  of  those  who  have 
been  left  to  take  up  this  great  cause,  do  not 
plead  it  in  all  that  seemliness  of  phrase 
which  the  scholars  and  practiced  rhetori 
cians  of  our  country  might  use.  You  must 
not  expect  them  to  manage  with  all  the 
calmness  and  discretion  that  clergymen  and 
83 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

statesmen  might  exhibit.  But  the  scholars, 
the  statesmen,  the  clergy  had  done  nothing, 
—  did  not  seem  about  to  do  anything,  and 
for  my  part  I  thank  God  that  at  last  any 
persons,  be  they  who  they  may,  have  ear 
nestly  engaged  in  this  cause;  for  no  move 
ment  can  be  in  vain.  We  Abolitionists  are 
what  we  are, —  babes,  sucklings,  obscure 
men,  silly  women,  publicans,  sinners,  and  we 
shall  manage  this  matter  just  as  might  be 
expected  of  such  persons  as  we  are.  It  is 
unbecoming  in  abler  men  who  stood  by  and 
would  do  nothing  to  complain  of  us  because 
we  do  no  better. 

"  '  Dr.  Channing,'  I  continued  with  in 
creased  earnestness,  '  it  is  not  our  fault 
that  those  who  might  have  conducted  this 
great  reform  more  prudently  have  left  it  to 
us  to  manage  as  we  may.  It  is  not  our 
fault  that  those  who  might  have  pleaded  for 
the  enslaved  so  much  more  wisely  and  elo 
quently,  both  with  the  pen  and  the  living 
voice  than  we  can,  have  been  silent.  We 
are  not  to  blame,  sir,  that  you,  who,  more 
perhaps  than  any  other  man,  might  have  so 
raised  the  voice  of  remonstrance  that  it 
should  have  been  heard  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  land, —  we  are 
not  to  blame,  sir,  that  you  have  not  so 
84 


PICTURES  OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

spoken.  And  now  that  inferior  men  have 
been  compelled  to  speak  and  act  against 
what  you  acknowledge  to  be  an  awful  sys 
tem  of  iniquity,  it  is  not  becoming  in  you 
to  complain  of  us  because  we  do  it  in  an 
inferior  style.  Why,  sir,  have  you  not 
taken  this  matter  in  hand  yourself?  Why 
have  you  not  spoken  to  the  nation  long  ago, 
as  you,  better  than  any  other  one,  could 
have  spoken  ?  ' 

"  At  this  point  I  bethought  me  to  whom 
I  was  administering  this  rebuke, —  the  man 
who  stood  among  the  highest  of  the  great 
and  good  in  our  land, —  the  man  whose 
reputation  for  wisdom  and  sanctity  had  be 
come  world-wide, —  the  man,  too,  who  had 
ever  treated  me  with  the  kindness  of  a 
father,  and  whom,  from  my  childhood,  I 
had  been  accustomed  to  revere  more  than 
any  one  living.  I  was  almost  overwhelmed 
with  a  sense  of  my  temerity.  His  counte 
nance  showed  that  he  was  much  moved.  I 
could  not  suppose  he  would  receive  all  I  had 
said  very  graciously.  I  waited  his  reply  in 
painful  expectation.  The  minutes  seemed 
very  long  that  elapsed  before  the  silence  was 
broken.  Then  in  a  very  subdued  manner 
and  in  the  kindliest  tones  of  his  voice  he 
said,  '  Brother  May,  I  acknowledge  the  jus- 
85 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

tice  of  your  reproof.  I  have  been  silent 
too  long/  Never  shall  I  forget  his  words, 
look  and  whole  appearance.  I  then  and 
there  saw  the  beauty,  the  magnanimity,  the 
humility  of  a  truly  great  Christian  soul.  He 
was  exalted  in  my  esteem  more  even  than 
before." 

Surely  this  is  as  moving  an  appeal  as  one 
man  ever  made  to  another;  and  the  figures 
of  May  and  Channng  seem  to  stand  as  in  a 
bas-relief  symbolizing  the  old  and  the  new 
generation.  Are  the  caverns  of  Anti-slav 
ery  controversy  strewn  with  fragments  of 
such  marble  as  this  ?  I  know  that  Emerson 
used  to  say  that  eloquence  was  dog-cheap  at 
Anti-slavery  meetings;  but  I  did  not  expect 
to  find  gestures  so  sublime  or  episodes  so 
moving.  The  figures  of  Hebrew  history, — 
of  Jacob  and  Joseph,  of  Nathan  and  David, 
of  Hagar  and  Ishmael, —  rise  before  us  in 
their  solemn,  soul-subduing  reality;  and  are 
one  in  spirit  with  these  Anti-slavery  scenes. 

My  shelves  are  lined  with  books  about 
Saint  Francis  of  Assisi;  my  walls  are  pa 
pered  with  photographs  of  men  of  genius  in 
Florence,  and  of  saints  in  Sienna.  I  desire 
also  to  remember  the  saints  of  New  Eng 
land.  We  Americans  are  digging  for  art 
and  for  intellect  in  Troy,  in  Sardis  and  in 
86 


PICTURES   OF  THE  STRUGGLE 

Egypt.  Let  us  sometimes  also  dig  in  the 
old  records  of  our  own  towns;  and,  while 
doing  so,  let  us  pray  that  mind  be  given  us 
to  understand  what  we  bring  to  light. 

In  the  year  following  his  interview  with 
May  (1836),  Dr.  Channing  published  his 
famous  pamphlet  on  Slavery,  which  was  of 
enormous  value  to  the  Anti-slavery  cause, 
though  it  did  not  coincide  with  Abolition 
opinion.  It  condemned  Slavery  to  heart's 
content,  but  did  not  advocate  immediate  ac 
tion.  The  engines  of  rationalism  and  the 
fountains  of  morality  were  by  Channing 
turned  upon  the  entire  subject.  This  was 
no  half -work:  it  was  thorough.  Chan- 
ning's  name  carried  the  book  into  houses, 
both  at  the  North  and  in  the  South  where 
no  Abolition  literature  could  penetrate; 
and  made  it  a  mile-stone  in  the  progress 
of  Anti-slavery.  Its  most  lasting  im 
portance  to  posterity,  however,  is  that 
it  proves  Channing's  courage,  and  shows 
that  his  occasional  subserviency  toward  his 
Trustees  was  not  due  to  a  defect  in  his  na 
ture,  but  to  a  defect  in  his  education,  a  de 
fect  in  his  vision.  Could  the  matter  have 
been  explained  to  his  mind  through  the 
elaborate  machinery  of  his  own  philosophy, 
he  would  have  broken  his  chains.  There 
87 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

are  plenty  of  people  to  whom  the  crucial 
problems  of  their  own  lives  never  get  pre 
sented  in  terms  that  they  can  understand. 

Abolitionists  were,  of  course,  not  satisfied 
with  Channing's  pamphlet ;  for  he  could  not 
sanction  their  views ;  and  indeed  he  repeated 
many  of  the  commonplace  charges  against 
them, —  e.  g.,  "  that  the  Abolitionists  exag 
gerated  the  importance  of  their  cause;  that 
they  sent  their  literature  to  the  slave; 
that  their  language  was  too  violent/' —  etc. 
Most  of  these  charges  appear  to-day  to  con 
tradict  the  main  thesis  of  the  book,  and  to 
record  merely  the  nervous  petulance  of  that 
age. 

The  Slave  Barons  and  their  Boston 
friends  were  cut  to  the  heart  by  Channing's 
essay.  They  denounced  him  as  an  even 
more  dangerous  enemy  than  Garrison.  If, 
at  times,  we  feel  dissatisfied  with  Chan 
ning's  caution,  we  should  remember  that  he 
was  a  middle-aged  man  when  these  prob 
lems  arose.  Channing  was  born  in  1780; 
and  Anti-slavery  was  an  agony  in  the  blood 
of  young  men,  in  1829. 

I  have  referred  to  John  Quincy  Adams' 

detestation  of  slavery.     He  was,  however, 

never  an  Abolitionist,  and  he  did  not  even 

favor  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District 

88 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

of  Columbia.  For  this  latter  opinion  he  had 
the  most  fantastic  reason;  namely  that,  al 
though  the  residents  of  the  District  had  no 
votes,  and  were  governed  by  Congress,  nev 
ertheless  he  felt  himself  to  be  all  the 
more  bound  in  honor  to  act  during  his  term 
in  Congress  as  if  he  were  the  representative 
chosen  by  the  people  of  that  District;  that 
is,  to  act  according  to  what  he  knew  to  be 
the  will  of  his  quasi  constituents.  But,  for 
his  real  constituents  he  held  no  such  rever 
ence,  and  in  his  dealings  with  them  he  was 
governed  by  his  own  conscience.  Such  are 
the  vagaries  of  men. 

The  romantic,  extravagant  nature  of  this 
man  was,  at  an  early  age,  put  in  irons  to 
law,  diplomacy,  politics,  and  administrative 
duty.  He  was  a  born  agitator,  who  ap 
peared  at  a  time  when  his  peculiar  talents 
were  not  demanded  by  the  age.  In  John 
Quincy  Adams'  boyhood  all  the  talents  and 
energies  of  this  country  were  required  for 
the  assembling,  setting  in  motion,  and  keep 
ing  together  of  the  machineries  of  our  new 
Government.  Tli£re_\vas no demand _  for.  < 

an  agitator,  whose  function  is  always  to  dis 
place  to  dispersef  and  to  ~rTuTTapall:.~ And 
thus  it  happened  with  John  Quincy  Adams 
that  he  was  never  young  till  he  was  old. 
89 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

The  opportunity  to  exercise  his  extraordi 
nary  talents  for  agitation  came  when  he 
took  his  seat  in  Congress  toward  the  close 
of  his  long,  brilliant  career.  He  proceeded 
to  focus  the  entire  attention  of  the  country 
upon  one  or  two  points  of  parliamentary 
procedure. 

Now  an  agitator  is  a  man  who  is  willing 
to  make  use  of  the  members  of  government, 
not  only  for  the  various  purposes  for  which 
they  are  framed,  as,  e.  g. —  the  Legislature 
to  legislate,  the  Judiciary  to  adjudicate,  the 
Executive  to  administer,  etc., —  but  this  man 
makes  use  of  any  or  all  of  them  as  a  ma 
chine  to  spread  an  idea.  He  uses  the  forms 
of  government  as  an  educational  apparatus. 
The  branch  of  the  Anti-slavery  cause  which 
it  became  Adams'  fate  to  develop,  was  the 
conflict  between  Slavery  and  the  right  to 
petition.  The  policy  of  the  Slave  Power 
was  to  smother  all  petitions  upon  the  sub 
ject  of  Slavery  which  came  before  Con 
gress,  by  laying  them  upon  the  table  unread. 
During  half  a  dozen  years  Adams  fought 
this  fight  practically  alone.  If  we  picture 
to  ourselves  a  man  who  had  grown  up  with 
the  country,  who  had  the  most  intimate 
recondite,  passionate  knowledge  of  its  con 
stitutional  law,  dedicating  himself  to  the 
90 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

plainest  proposition  regarding  free  speech, 
and  proclaiming  it  in  the  face  of  a  howling 
but  comparatively  unlettered  majority,  who 
seethed,  and  raged,  and  raved  about  him  like 
the  waves  about  a  light-house  —  we  have 
John  Quincy  Adams  at  an  age  of  over 
seventy,  presenting  the  Abolition  petitions 
in  Congress.  His  figure  is  part  of  the  Anti- 
slavery  struggle.  It  is  clear  to  our  instinct 
that  if  Adams  did  not  have  Abolition  in  his 
veins,  he  had  something  almost  as  good ;  he 
had  the  thing  that  Abolition  was  the  sign 
of,  namely,  courage.  His  peculiar  kind  of 
courage  was,  in  one  sense,  not  as  good  as 
Abolition ;  for  it  was  not  an  elixir.  It  would 
never  have  abolished  slavery :  it  was  not  self- 
perpetuating.  It  would  have  died  with  him. 
Yet  the  passion  within  him,  which  he 
cloaked  under  the  name  of  Free  Speech,  was 
in  reality  the  Will  to  Pity,  the  Will  to  Love, 
the  Will  to  express  freely  that  emotional 
side  of  man's  nature  with  which  he  himself 
was  so  richly  endowed.  This  is  why  the 
last  page  of  this  man's  life  lifts  him  into 
a  new  kind  of  greatness.  It  makes  no  dif 
ference  what  he  did  before  this  era.  His 
service  to  the  Abolition  cause  was  propor 
tionate  to  his  position.  His  conduct  showed 
the  country  what  slavery  pointed  to,  and 
91 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

demonstrated  also  the  conservative  nature 
of  Abolition.  It  showed  that  Abolition  was 
at  one  with  the  foundations  of  society. 
'The  aristocracy  of  Boston,  during  these 
years,  regarded  John  Quincy  Adams  as  an 
enfant  terrible;  but  the  people  of  Massa 
chusetts  stood  by  him  and,  in  the  end,  ral 
lied  to  congratulate  him  at  a  monster  meet 
ing.  Human  nature  could  not  withhold  its 
tribute  of  admiration. 

George  Thompson,  an  Englishman,  whose 
life  had  been  devoted  to  the  cause  of  Anti- 
slavery  in  the  British  colonies,  and  who 
was  one  of  the  greatest  popular  orators 
of  that  day,  had  done  more  than  any 
one  man  to  abolish  West  Indian  Slavery; 
and  it  was  natural  that  Garrison,  who 
went  to  England  in  1833  for  conference 
with  the  victorious  British  Abolition 
ists,  should  enlist  Thompson  in  the  Ameri 
can  cause  and  bring  him  to  America.  Upon 
the  passage  of  the  Act  abolishing  Slavery 
in  the  West  Indies,  Lord  Brougham  had 
risen  in  the  House  of  Lords  and  said :  "  I  rise 
to  take  the  crown  of  this  most  glorious  vic 
tory  from  every  other  head,  and  place  it 
upon  George  Thompson's.  He  has  done 
more  than  any  other  man  to  achieve  it." 
One  can  imagine  how  the  Americans  of 
92 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

1833,  who  set  a  price  on  the  heads  of  their 
own  compatriots  when  they  were  Abolition 
ists,  would  welcome  the  most  powerful,  the 
most  popular  living  advocate  of  the  hated 
cause, —  a  stranger  and  an  Englishman. 
Thompson  was  mobbed  and  hounded,  threat 
ened,  insulted,  and  would  have  been  killed 
if  fate  had  assisted  ever  so  little  by  lending 
the  opportunity.  I  shall  content  myself 
with  giving  Mr.  May's  description  of 
Thompson's  eloquence. 

"  Mr.  Thompson  then  went  on  to  give  us 
a  graphic,  glowing  account  of  the  long  and 
fierce  conflict  they  had  had  in  England  for 
the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  British  West 
Indies.  His  eloquence  rose  to  a  still  higher 
order.  His  narrative  became  a  continuous 
metaphor,  admirably  sustained.  He  repre 
sented  the  Anti-slavery  enterprise  in  which 
he  had  been  so  long  engaged  as  a  stout,  well- 
built  ship,  manned  by  a  noble-hearted  crew, 
launched  upon  a  stormy  ocean,  bound  to 
carry  inestimable  relief  to  800,000  sufferers 
in  a  far-distant  land.  He  clothed  all  kinds 
of  opposition  they  had  met,  all  the  difficul 
ties  they  had  contended  with,  in  imagery 
suggested  by  the  observation  and  experience 
of  the  voyager  across  the  Atlantic  in  the 
most  tempestuous  season  of  the  year.  In 

93 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

the  height  of  his  descriptions,  my  attention 
was  withdrawn  from  the  emotions  enkindled 
in  my  own  bosom  sufficiently  to  observe  the 
effect  of  his  eloquence  upon  half  a  dozen 
boys,  of  twelve  or  fourteen  years  of  age,  sit 
ting  together  not  far  from  the  platform. 
They  were  completely  possessed  by  it. 
When  the  ship  reeled  or  plunged  or  stag 
gered  in  the  storms,  they  unconsciously 
went  through  the  same  motions.  WThen  the 
enemy  attacked  her,  the  boys  took  the  live 
liest  part  in  battle, —  manning  the  guns,  or 
handing  shot  and  shell,  or  pressing  forward 
to  repulse  the  boarders.  When  the  ship 
struck  upon  an  iceberg,  the  boys  almost  fell 
from  their  seats  in  the  recoil.  When  the 
sails  and  topmasts  were  well-nigh  carried 
away  by  the  gale,  they  seemed  to  be  strain 
ing  themselves  to  prevent  the  damage;  and 
when  at  length  the  ship  triumphantly  sailed 
into  her  destined  port  with  colors  flying  and 
signals  of  glad  tidings  floating  from  her 
topmast,  and  the  shout  of  welcome  rose 
from  thousands  of  expectant  freedmen  on 
the  shore,  the  boys  gave  three  loud  cheers, 
'  Hurrah !  Hurrah !  Hurrah ! '  This  irre 
pressible  explosion  of  their  feelings  brought 
them  at  once  to  themselves.  They  blushed, 
94 


PICTURES   OF  THE   STRUGGLE 

covered  their   faces,   sank   down   on  their 
seats,  one  of  them  upon  the  floor." 

It  was  one  thing  for  the  American  to  thrill 
for  the  liberty  of  Greece,  Poland,  or  Hun 
gary;  and  another  to  allow  foreign  enthu 
siasts  to  thrill  over  American  Anti-slavery. 
Thompson  was  marked  for  assassination  and 
kidnapping;  and  a  gibbet  was  erected  for 
him  in  Boston.  It  was  Thompson  whom  the 
mob  were  in  search  of  when  they  caught 
Garrison  at  the  meeting  of  the  Female  Anti- 
slavery  Society,  soon  to  be  described.  The 
impertinence  of  Thompson  consisted  in  his 
being  a  foreigner,  and  this  fact  played  upon 
the  peculiar  American  weakness, —  our  sen 
sitiveness  to  foreign  opinion.  "  He  comes 
here  from  the  dark  corrupt  institutions  of 
Europe,"  said  Mr.  Sprague  in  Faneuil  Hall, 
"  to  enlighten  us  upon  the  rights  of  man  and 
the  moral  duties  of  our  own  condition.  Re 
ceived  by  our  hospitality,  he  stands  here 
upon  our  soil,  protected  by  our  laws,  and 
hurls  '  firebrands,  arrows  and  death  '  into 
the  habitations  of  our  neighbors,  and 
friends,  and  brothers;  and  when  he  shall 
have  kindled  a  conflagration  which  is  sweep 
ing  in  desolation  over  the  land,  he  has  only 
to  embark  for  his  own  country,  and  there 


95 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

look  serenely  back  with  indifference  or  ex 
ultation  upon  the  widespread  ruin  by  which 
our  cities  are  wrapt  in  flames,  and  our  gar 
ments  rolled  in  blood.  .  .  .  If  the  storm 
comes,  we  must  abide  its  pelting;  if  convul 
sions  come,  we  must  be  in  the  midst  of  them. 
To  usf  then,  it  belongs  to  judge  of  the  ex 
igencies  of  our  own  condition,  to  provide  for 
our  own  safety,  and  perform  our  own  duties 
without  the  audacious  interference  of  for 
eign  emissaries." 

I  am  grateful  to  this  man,  George  Thomp 
son.  He  stood  for  courage  in  1835  in  Mas 
sachusetts.  He  typified  courage  also  at  a 
later  time  during  the  Civil  War  when  he 
stood  with  John  Bright  and  W.  E.  Foster  as 
the  expounders  of  the  cause  of  the  North 
before  the  people  of  Great  Britain.  He  was 
one  of  the  friends  of  the  United  States  to 
whom  it  is  due  that  England's  governing 
classes  did  not  assist  the  South  openly,  and 
thereby  give  rise  to  an  age-long,  never-dying 
antagonism  between  England  and  America. 
I  am  glad  that  George  Thompson  lived 
to  be  thanked  by  Lincoln  and  his  Cab 
inet,  and  to  be  ceremoniously  received  in  a 
House  of  Representatives  thronged  with 
the  best  intellects  and  hearts  in  America. 

96 


THE   CRISIS 

I  HAVE  given  the  foregoing  sketches  almost 
at  random,  and,  where  possible,  in  the  words 
of  others,  in  order  to  call  up  the  decade  be 
tween  1830  and  1840  without  myself  feeling 
the  responsibility  of  a  historian,  and  without 
asking  the  reader  to  give  a  chronological  at 
tention.  Facts  often  speak  for  themselves 
more  truly,  the  less  we  explain  them;  and 
the  philosophy  of  history  is  perhaps  a  delu 
sion. 

It ^ wa§ .between  1830  and  1840  that  the 
real  work  of  Garrison  was  done.  At  the 
beginning  of  that  decade  Abolition~~WaT~a 
cry  in  the  wilderness :  at  the  end  of  it,  Ab 
olition  was  a  part  of  the  American  mind. 
Garrison's  occupation  throughout  the  epoch 
was"  to  tend  his  engine  —  his  Liberator, — 
and  to  assist  in  the  formation  of  Anti-slavery 
Societies.  Every  breath  of  the  movement... 
was  chronicled  in  the  Liberator,  every  new 
convert  wrote  to  ...Garrison  for  heljD. ,  Gar 
rison  was  the  focus,  the  exchange,  the  center 
97 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

and  heart  of  Anti-slavery  activity.  He  was 
the  "channel  into  which  the  new  streams 
flowed^  If  a..drop  of  Abolition  fell  from 
the  sky  anywhere  in  America,  it  was  found 
in  the  Liberator  upon  the  following  morn- 
ingi_  This  drawing  of  the  new  men  into  a 
knowledge  of  each  other  made  magical  heat. 
Every  Abolition  act  or  thought  went  im 
mediately  into  the  general  Abolition  con 
sciousness.  It  was  Garrison  who  caused  the 
heat-lightning  of  1825  to  turn  into  the  thun 
derbolts  of  1835.  His  gift  of  doing  this 
was  his  greatness. 

We  must  imagine  Garrison  then,  as 
always,  behind  and  underneath  the  ma 
chinery  and  in  touch  with  all  the  forces  at 
work,  writing  away  at.  his  terrible  Lib 
erator, —  fomenting,  rebuking,  retorting, 
supporting,  expounding,  thundering,  scold 
ing.  The  continuousness  of  Garrison  is  ap 
palling,  and  fatigues  even  the  retrospective 
imagination  of  posterity:  he  is  like  an  all- 
night  hotel :  he  is  possessed :  he  is  like  some 
thing  let  loose.  I  dread  the  din  of  him.  I 
cover  my  head  and  fix  my  mind  on  other 
things;  but  there  is  Garrison  hammering 
away,  till  he  catches  my  eye  and  forces  me 
to  attend  to  him.  If  Garrison  can  do  this  to 
me,  who  am  protected  from  dread  of  him  by 
98 


THE    CRISIS 

eighty  years  of  intervening  time,  think 
how  his  lash  must  have  fallen  upon  the  thin 
skins  of  our  ancestors! 

Garrison,  then,  and  his  propaganda  went 
forward;  the  South  under  its  resentment 
swelled  and  fretted,  and  every  phase  of  the 
matter  was  day  by  day  recorded  in  the  Lib-  I 
era-tor,  which  remains  as  the  inexhaustible 
coal  bed  and  historical  deposit  of  these 
things.  Every  leaf  and  twig,  every  letter,J 
every  quarrel,  every  prayer,  is  here  pre 
served  in  the  immortality  of  petrifac 
tion.  To  be  in  himself  the  focalization 
and  to  leave  behind  him  the  fossilization 
of  that  wonderful  epoch  was  Garrison's 
function. 

,The  crisis  in  the  struggle  came  in  1835-6, 
when  a  great  attempt  was  seriously  made 
by  the  whole  organized  force  of  the  Slave 
Power  to  put  down  the  Abolitionists.  This 
suppression  was  to  be  done  in  the  or 
dinary,  historic  way, —  through  laws  to  be 
made  against  them,  and  through  violence, 
where  law  fell  short.  It  will  be  seen  in  an 
instant  that  law  was,  throughout,  on  the 
side  of  the  Abolitionists;  and  this  is  the 
reason  why  the  violence  was  so  great.  The 
South  could  not  get  at  Garrison  through 
sheriffs  and  jailers.  Therefore  it  was 

99 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

tempted  to  resort  to  riots  and  extra-legal  ter 
rorism.  It  was  lured  into  the  fabrication  of 
myths, —  as  for  instance,  the  myth  that  the 
constitution  protected  slavery  against  ad 
verse  opinion,  the  myth  that  the  Abolition 
ists  favored  slave-insurrection,  the  myth 
that  the  language  of  the  Abolitionists  was  so 
extreme  as  to  make  them  the  enemies  of  so 
ciety,  the  exceedingly  absurd  myth  that  to 
send  Anti-slavery  publications  through  the 
United  States  mails  directed  to  adult  white 
men  in  the  South  was,  somehow,  an  atro 
cious  outrage. 

The  truth  is  that  between  1830  and  1835, 
the  element  of  passion  was  rising  past  the 
danger  point,  and  running  into  something 
like  insanity  in  the  Southern  mind.  A  mad 
man  believes  his  own  logic,  and  ever  drives 
it  further.  The  failure  of  law  to  protect 
the  South  left  no  accurate  demarcation  as 
to  their  demands.  At  the  beginning,  the 
slave-holders  protested  that  Garrison  should 
be  silenced,  because  he  was  a  fanatic ;  but  be 
fore  long  they  were  demanding  that  the 
Abolitionists  should  be  hanged,  and  were 
mingling  the  name  of  Channing  in  their 
execrations.  In  the  beginning  they  de 
manded  only  to  be  let  alone ;  but  before  long 
they  were  swearing  that  the  South  should 

100 


THE   CRISIS 

buy  and  sell  slaves  underneath  Bunker  Hill 
monument. 

This  tidal  fury  could  not  be  conciliated. 
Anything  that  threatened  the  existence  of 
Slavery~slirriulated  the  fury  —  and  the  time 
had  come  when  all  nature  began  to  threaten 
Slavery.  Slavery  began,  in  fact,  to  stalk 
abroad  and  horrify  the  world:  Slavery  came 
out  of  its  lair.  At  first  there  were  meetings 
in  the  South,  destruction  of  Abolition  liter 
ature  in  the  mails;  then  white  Vigilance 
Committees,  and  State  legislatures  called,  in 
chorus,  upon  the  North  to  stop  the  plague 
of  Abolition  by  the  enactment  of  stringent 
laws  against  the  reformers.  A  giant  dem 
onstration  was  planned  by  the  friends  of 
the  South  to  take  place  at  Faneuil  Hall  in 
Boston — 1500  names  being  appended  to 
the  call  for  the  meeting.  This  meeting  was 
to  demonstrate  the  good  faith  of  the  North 
towards  the  slaveholders,  and  to  give  public 
opinion  a  set  towards  the  enactment  of 
criminal  statutes  against  Anti-slavery.  The 
meeting  was  a  tremendous  success  and 
proved  to  be  a  sort  of  "  view-halloo  "  for 
Slavery.  It  was  naturally  followed  by  an 
increase  of  riots  and  mob  violence  against 
the  Abolitionists.  The  most  important  of 
the  new  ebullitions  was  the  so  called  Boston 
101 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

mob  (October  21,  1835),  which  led  Garri 
son  about  with  a  rope  round  him, —  and 
might  easily  have  ended  in  his  death.  Gen 
eral  Jackson,  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  referred  to  the  recent  Pro-slavery 
demonstration  at  the  North  in  his  Message 
to  Congress,  in  December,  1835. 

"  It  is  fortunate  for  the  country,"  he  says, 
"  that  the  good  sense,  the  generous  feeling, 
and  the  deep-rooted  attachment  of  the  peo 
ple  of  the  non-slaveholding  States  to  the 
Union,  and  to  their  fellow  citizens  of  the 
same  blood  in  the  South,  have  given  so 
strong  and  inpressive  a  tone  to  the  senti 
ments  entertained  against  the  proceedings  of 
the  misguided  persons  who  have  engaged  in 
these  unconstitutional  and  wicked  attempts 
['  to  circulate  through  the  mails  inflamma 
tory  appeals  addressed  to  the  passions  of  the 
slaves']." 

Here  was  support  from  high  quarters. 
It  was  not  till  January,  1836,  that  the  time 
came  for  Edward  Everett,  Governor  of 
Massachusetts,  to  take  notice  of  the  entreat 
ies  of  the  Southern  States.  In  his  Message 
to  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  he  intimated 
that  the  Abolitionists  could  be  punished  un 
der  the  law  as  it  stood :  because  "  whatever 
by  direct  and  necessary  operation  is  calcula- 
102 


THE    CRISIS 

ted  to  excite  insurrection  among  slaves  may 
be  prosecuted  as  a  misdemeanor  at  common 
law."  This  part  of  his  Message  was  re 
ferred  to  a  joint  Committee  of  Five  of  the 
Legislature,  together  with  the  Southern  en 
treaties.  It  was  in  the  hearings  before  this 
committee,  that  the  work  was  done  which 
put  an  end  to  Southern  hopes  of  enslaving 
Massachusetts.  The  great  attempt  was 
foiled.  The  South  had  done  its  utmost  to 
suppress  Abolition,  and  had  failed.  After 
this  time,  Abolition  is  in  the  field  as  an  ac 
cepted  fact.  Within  eight  years  thereafter, 
in  1844,  Birney  was  nominated  for  the 
Presidency  as  the  candidate  of  a  third  party. 
We  must  think  of  this  whole  Southern 
movement  as  a  big,  mountainous  wave,  in 
volving  multitudinous  lesser  waves  and  ed 
dies,  which,  as  it  rolled  forward  and  surged 
back,  created  complex  disturbances,  all  inter 
locked  with  one  another.  The  power  of  the 
South  was  exerted  over  the  President  at 
Washington  and  over  the  ruffian  on  the 
street  corner,  and  it  was  all  one  power,  one 
pull  together,  one  control.  Let  us  take  a 
rapid  but  clear  glance  over  certain  stages  of 
the  movement  which  have  already  been  men 
tioned.  The  popular  feeling  at  the  South, 
which  was  the  motive  power  of  the  whole 
103 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

affair,  may  be  illustrated  in  a  paragraph  from 
the  Richmond  Whig: 

"Let  the  hell-hounds  of  the  North  be 
ware.  Let  them  not  feel  too  much  security 
in  their  homes,  or  imagine  that  they  who 
throw  firebrands,  although  from,  as  they 
think,  so  safe  a  distance,  will  be  permitted  to 
escape  with  impunity.  There  are  thousands 
now  animated  with  a  spirit  to  brave  every 
danger  to  bring  these  felons  to  justice  on  the 
soil  of  the  Southern  States,  whose  women 
and  children  they  have  dared  to  endan 
ger  by  their  hell-concocted  plots.  We  have 
feared  that  Southern  exasperation  would 
seize  some  of  the  prime  conspirators  in  their 
very  beds,  and  drag  them  to  meet  the  pun 
ishment  due  their  offenses.  We  fear  it  no 
longer.  We  hope  it  may  be  so,  and  our  ap 
plause  as  one  man  shall  follow  the  success 
ful  enterprise." 

This  then  is  the  outer  ring  of  fiery  feeling 
which  dreamed  of  moving  Northward  and 
doing,  it  knew  not  what,  to  put  down  Aboli 
tion.  The  spirit  of  violence,  as  shown,  for 
instance,  in  the  breaking  into  of  the  United 
States  Post-office  at  Charleston,  S.  C,  and 
the  seizing  of  Abolition  newspapers  for  a 
bonfire,  was  redoubled  by  the  attitude  of 
the  Federal  authorities.  The  United  States 
104 


THE    CRISIS 

Postmaster  General,  Amos  Kendall,  a  Mas 
sachusetts  man,  approved  the  deed.  Now, 
the  only  reason  why  riots  do  not  occur  every 
day,  accompanied  by  destruction  of  property 
and  injury  to  unoffending  persons,  is  that 
the  strong  arm  of  law  and  order  is 
against  the  ubiquitous  loafer  and  ruffian. 
Once  let  this  gentleman  see  a  chance  of  riot 
ing  with  impunity,  and  he  instantly  appears 
and  riots.  How  easily  then  did  disturb 
ances  follow  when  State  and  National  of 
ficials,  as  well  as  the  rich  and  respectable 
classes,  gave  the  cue.  The  average  man  at 
the  time  we  are  chronicling  really  believed 
that  the  Abolitionist  was  a  criminal  in  es 
sence,  and  ought  to  be  proclaimed  as  such  by 
law. 

The  Anti-slavery  writers,  in  describing 
this  period,  use  the  terminology  of  fiercer 
times.  Harriet  Martineau  calls  it  a  "  Mar 
tyr  Age,"  and  we  constantly  hear  of  the 
"  reign  of  terror  "  in  1835.  Now  the  term 
"  persecution  "  is  apt  to  call  up  in  our  minds 
the  fiercest  images  of  history,  scenes  of 
bloodshed  and  tyranny,  combats  with  wild 
beasts  in  the  amphitheater,  executions  in  the 
market-place,  men  driven  to  hide  in  caves  in 
the  rocks,  etc.  The  unpleasantnesses  and 
injustices  to  which  the  Abolitionists  were 
105 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

subjected  never  justified  a  literal  appli 
cation  of  the  terms  "  martyr,"  "  reign  of 
terror/'  etc. ;  but  the  word  "  persecution  " 
is  most  aptly  used  to  describe  their 
sufferings,  if  we  reflect  that  there  are 
persecutions  which  do  not  result  in  death. 
Prudence  Crandall  was  certainly  persecu 
ted;  the  Abolitionist  was  harassed  and  his 
life  was  made  as  uncomfortable  as  the  law 
would  permit.  The  outrages,  both  legal  and 
extra  legal,  which  fell  upon  anti-slavery 
people,  may  be  studied  at  leisure  in  the  press 
of  the  time.  They  lie  upon  any  page  of  the 
history  of  that  day.  The  following  are 
severe  cases.  They  are  mentioned  in  the 
large  life  of  Garrison : 

"  Dr.  Reuben  Crandall,  a  perfectly  inno 
cent  man  and  younger  brother  of  Prudence 
Crandall,  was  thrown  into  a  noisome  jail  in 
Georgetown,  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  on 
a  charge  of  '  circulating  Tappan,  Garrison  & 
Company's  papers,  encouraging  the  negroes 
to  insurrection,'  for  which  a  mob  would  fain 
have  lynched  him.  ...  It  was  nearly 
a  year  before  he  was  brought  to  trial,  and 
meantime  his  health  had  been  ruined." 

"  Five  thousand  dollars  were  offered  on 
the  Exchange  in  New  York  for  the  head  of 
Arthur  Tappan  on  Friday  last,"  writes 
106 


THE   CRISIS 

Henry  Benson  to  Garrison.  "  Elizur 
Wright  is  barricading  his  house  with  shut 
ters,  bars  and  bolts." 

"  How  imminent  is  the  danger  that  hovers 
about  the  persons  of  our  friends  George 
Thompson  and  Arthur  Tappan ! "  writes 
Garrison  to  George  Benson.  "  Rewards  for 
the  seizure  of  the  latter  are  multiplying  — 
in  one  place  they  offer  three  thousand  dollars 
for  his  ears  —  a  purse  has  been  made  up, 
publicly,  of  $20,000,  in  New  Orleans  for  his 
person.  I,  too, —  I  desire  to  bless  God, — 
am  involved  in  almost  equal  peril.  I  have 
have  just  received  a  letter  written  evidently 
by  a  friendly  hand,  in  which  I  am  apprised 
that  '  my  life  is  sought  after,  and  a  reward 
of  $20,000  has  been  offered  for  my  head  by 
six  Mississippians.'  He  says  — '  Beware  of 
the  assassin !  May  God  protect  you ! '  and 
signs  himself  '  A  Marylander,  and  a  resi 
dent  of  Philadelphia/  " 

"  Typical  cases  were  the  town-meeting 
appointment  of  a  vigilance  committee  to 
prevent  Anti-slavery  meetings  in  Canaan,  N. 
H. ;  the  arrest  of  the  Rev.  George  Storrs,  at 
Northfield,  in  the  same  State,  in  a  friendly 
pulpit,  at  the  close  of  a  discourse  on  slavery, 
as  a  *  common  brawler/  and  his  subsequent 
sentence  by  a  *  justice  of  the  peace '  to  hard 
107 


WILLIAM    LLOYD   GARRISON 

labor  in  the  House  of  Correction  for  three 
months  (not  sustained  on  appeal)  ;  and  the 
repeated  destruction  of  Birney's  Philan 
thropist  printing-office  by  the  '  gentlemen  of 
property  and  standing  '  in  Cincinnati  —  an 
outrage  bearing  a  close  resemblance  to  that 
engendered  by  the  Faneuil  Hall  meeting,  and 
ending  in  a  midnight  raid  upon  the  colored 
homes  of  the  city,  with  the  connivance  of 
the  mayor." 

As  for  mere  social  ostracism, —  the  refusal 
on  the  part  of  Beacon  Street  to  ask  Wendell 
Phillips  to  dinner,  the  black-balling  at  the 
Clubs  in  New  York  of  distinguished  Aboli 
tionists, —  the  Muse  of  History  cannot  re 
cord  these  things  among  her  tragedies.  We 
have  seen,  in  the  case  of  Henry  I.  Bowditch 
and  his  walk  with  Douglass,  upon  what  plane 
the  drama  moved.  It  was  a  drama  of  char 
acter,  rather  than  a  drama  of  blood. 
The  Anti-slavery  people  are,  however,  not 
inexcusable  in  calling  this  epoch  "  the  reign 
of  terror."  It  was,  at  any  rate,  a  reign  of 
brickbats  and  anathema,  which  developed 
here  and  there  into  tarring  and  feathering 
and  murder.  The  reason  why  it  did  not 
turn  into  a  veritable  reign  of  terror,  a  time 
of  proscription  and  execution,  is  that  the 
middle  classes  at  the  North  awoke  out  of 
108 


THE    CRISIS 

their  lethargy,  and  protected  the  reformers 
instead  of  oppressing  them.  The  passions 
were  there ;  the  introverted  enthusiasm  of  the 
South  and  the  martyr  spirit  of  the  Abolition 
ist  were  there.  There  also  was  the  pliant 
tool  between  them  —  the  Northern  business 
man.  This  tool,  however,  broke. 

The  great  meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall,  al 
ready  spoken  of,  a  meeting  attended  by  nu 
merous  Southerners  who  made  the  journey 
to  Boston  on  purpose,  represents  the  apogee 
of  the  Sun  of  Liberty  in  America.  In  con 
sidering  this  meeting  we  are  again  baffled  by 
the  strangeness  of  its  historic  atmosphere; 
the  low  pulse  of  the  Northerner  is  a  puzzle 
to  us.  It  is  easy  to  understand  and  sym 
pathize  with  the  Southern  tiger  bereft  of  his 
prey,  and  with  the  Northern  lamb  who  lifts 
up  his  voice  for  justice  before  being  de 
voured.  The  first  is  the  typical  tyrant,  and 
the  second  the  typical  saint.  The  conduct, 
however,  of  the  Massachusetts  Philistine, 
who  looks  like  an  educated  gentleman  and 
acts  the  part  of  a  terrified  servant,  is  a  dif 
ficult  thing  to  understand.  We  can  get  a 
sidelong  glimpse  into  the  mystery  by  remem 
bering  how  people  behave  in  moments  of 
panic, —  with  what  meanness,  with  what  ir 
rational  thoughtlessness,  with  what  denial  of 
109 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

their  true  selves.  Now  the  Massachusetts 
statesmen,  business  men,  and  persons  of  dis 
tinction  and  wealth,  had  lived  for  years  in  a 
state  of  continuous  panic.  This  had  shred 
ded  them  into  spectres.  It  is  quite  true  that 
there  was  a  spiritual  "  reign  of  terror  "  at 
this  epoch,  a  terror  which  intimately  affected 
all  classes,  and  the  Abolitionists'  phrase  is 
thus  truer  than  it  seemed. 

Peleg  Sprague,  one  of  Massachusetts* 
most  distinguished  men,  a  United  States 
Senator  and  former  Congressman,  and  a 
thoroughly  representative  mouthpiece  of  the 
Conservative  classes  at  the  North,  spoke  as 
follows  at  the  memorable  Pro-slavery  meet 
ing  in  Faneuil  Hall : 

"  Time  was,  when  ...  the  generous 
and  gallant  Southrons  came  to  our  aid,  and 
our  fathers  refused  not  to  hold  communion 
with  slaveholders.  .  .  .  When  He,  that 
slaveholder  (pointing  to  the  full-length  por 
trait  of  Washington),  who  from  this  can 
vas  smiles  upon  you  —  his  children  —  with 
paternal  benignity,  came  with  other  slave 
holders  to  drive  the  British  myrmidons  from 
this  city  and  this  hall,  our  father  did  not  re 
fuse  to  hold  communion  with  him  or  them. 
With  slaveholders  they  formed  the  Confed 
eration,  neither  asking  nor  receiving  any 
no 


THE   CRISIS 

right  to  interfere  in  their  domestic  relations ; 
with  them  they  made  the  Declaration  of  In 
dependence,  coming  from  the  pen  of  that 
other  slaveholder,  Thomas  Jefferson,  a  name 
dear  to  every  friend  of  human  rights. 
And  in  the  original  draft  of  that  Declara 
tion  was  contained  a  most  eloquent  passage 
upon  this  very  topic  of  negro  slavery,  which 
was  stricken  out  in  deference  to  the  wishes 
of  members  from  the  South." 

There  is  something  about  this  language  so 
far  removed  from  good  sense  that  it  gives  us 
pause.  That  something  is  the  influence  of 
terror.  Mr.  Marrison  Gray  Otis,  who 
moved  on  a  still  higher  social  plane  than 
Sprague,  nay,  who  stood  very  near  the  gods 
in  the  imagination  of  Bostonians,  spoke  as 
follows : 

"  I  deny  that  any  body  of  men  can  law 
fully  associate  for  the  purpose  of  undermin 
ing,  more  than  for  overthrowing,  the  gov 
ernment  of  our  sister  States.  There  may 
be  no  statute  to  make  such  combinations 
penal,  because  the  offense  is  of  a  new  com 
plexion." 

Mr.  Otis  found  an  even  stronger  objec 
tion  to  the  Society  in  "  its  evident  direction 
towards  becoming  a  political  association, 
whose  object  it  will  be,  and  whose  tendency 
in 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

now  is,  to  bear  directly  upon  the  ballot-boxes 
and  to  influence  the  elections,"  as  in  the  re 
cent  case  of  Abbott  Lawrence.  "  How  soon 
might  you  see  a  majority  in  Congress  re 
turned  under  the  influence  of  (Anti-slavery) 
associations  ?  " 

Otis'  reasoning  here  is  the  chattering  of 
teeth.  "The  ballot  box  and  election!"—- 
why  not?  The  slavery  issue  to  come  into 
politics, —  who  can  prevent  it?  Where  are 
we?  Who  is  talking?  Have  I  read  that 
sentence  aright?  Such  questions  go 
through  one's  mind  no  matter  how  often 
one  re-reads  these  speeches.  Ht  must  be  con 
fessed  that  a  city  is  not  far  from  chaos  when 
so  much  passion  and  so  faint  a  rationality 
can  go  forth  as  the  voice  of  her  powerful 
classes,  and  of  her  educated  men.  The  situ 
ation  was  greatly  alleviated  by  the  good 
sense  and  calmness  of  the  Abolitionists;  for 
although  Garrison's  language  was  generally 
blatant,  his  conduct  was  invariably  exem 
plary;  and  the  reformers'  course  of  action  in 
legal  and  legislative  maneuvering  was  often 
brilliant  in  the  extreme. 

The  Boston  Abolitionists  behaved  during 
this  trying  season  with  circumspection. 
After  the  Faneuil  Hall  demonstration, 
Mayor  Lyman,  who  had  presided  at  that 

112 


THE    CRISIS 

meeting,  had,  in  a  courteous  if  not  friendly 
manner,  privately  counseled  them  to  dis 
continue  their  meetings  while  the  public 
mind  was  so  heated,  at  the  same  time  assur 
ing  them  that  he  would  protect  them  in  their 
rights  if  they  chose  to  exercise  them.  They 
therefore  held  only  their  constitutional 
meetings;  and  it  was  one  of  these  which 
fell  due  on  Wednesday,  October  14,  the  an 
niversary  of  the  formation  of  the  Boston 
Female  Anti-slavery  Society.  This  meeting 
was  postponed  and  duly  advertised  for  Octo 
ber  21,  1835.  On  that  day  a  Pro-slavery 
mob,  organized  by  newspaper  men  and  busi 
ness  men,  and  composed  of  from  two  to  five 
thousand  particularly  respectable  persons, 
was  got  together  for  the  purpose  of  tarring 
and  feathering  George  Thompson,  who  was 
believed  to  be  at  the  meeting.  As  Thomp 
son  was  not  to  be  found,  the  mob  cried  out 
for  Garrison.  It  surged  into  the  women's 
meeting  where  Garrison  was.  For  some 
time  the  thirty  women  went  forward  with 
their  prayers  and  proceedings  while  the  mob 
howled  upon  them.  Garrison  left  the  meet 
ing  in  order  to  protect  it,  but  could  not  es 
cape  from  the  building  on  account  of  the 
crowd.  He  therefore  retreated  across  the 
hall  to  the  Anti-slavery  office  which  hap- 
113 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

pened  to  be  in  the  same  building.  Thither 
the  crowd  followed  him. 

"  An  assault,"  according  to  Garrison's  ac 
count  of  the  matter,  "  was  now  made  upon 
the  door  of  the  office,  the  lower  panel  of 
which  was  instantly  dashed  to  pieces. 
Stooping  down  and  glaring  upon  me  as  I  sat 
at  the  desk,  writing  an  account  of  the  riot 
to  a  distant  friend,  the  ruffians  cried  out  — 
'  There  he  is !  That's  Garrison !  Out  with 
the  scoundrel ! '  etc.,  etc.  Turning  to  Mr. 
Burleigh,  I  said  — '  You  may  as  well  open 
the  door,  and  let  them  come  in  and  do  their 
worst/  But  he,  with  great  presence  of 
mind,  went  out,  locked  the  door,  put  the  key 
in  his  pocket,  and  by  his  admirable  firmness 
succeeded  in  keeping  the  office  safe." 

Mayor  Lyman  now  appeared  upon  the 
scene,  and  prevailed  upon  the  women  to 
adjourn.  They  passed  down  the  staircase 
"  amid  manifestations  of  revengeful  bru 
tality"  and  so,  in  a  close  column,  to  the 
house  of  Francis  Jackson,  a  new  and  power 
ful  recruit  to  their  cause.  Mayor  Lyman 
now  had  to  deal  with  the  mob.  Their  at 
tention  had  been  attracted  to  the  Anti-slav 
ery  sign-board  and  Mayor  Lyman  permitted 
its  demolition  by  the  crowd,  a  betrayal  of 
his  trust  as  custodian  of  property  and  of  the 
114 


THE    CRISIS 

peace  which  Garrison  never  forgave.  The 
Mayor  thereupon  devoted  his  energies  to 
helping  Garrison  to  make  good  his  escape 
from  the  mob.  Garrison  was  induced  to 
get  out  of  a  rear  window,  and  one  of  the 
sheriffs,  in  order  to  persuade  the  crowd  to 
disperse,  announced  that  Garrison  had  es 
caped.  The  crowd,  however,  got  on  his 
track  and  followed  after  him.  It  came  up 
with  him  in  a  carpenter's  shop.  The 
crowd  was  made  up  of  both  friends  and 
foes. 

"  On  seeing  me,"  continues  Garrison, 
"  three  or  four  of  the  rioters,  uttering  a  yell, 
furiously  dragged  me  to  the  window,  with 
the  intention  of  hurling  me  from  that  height 
to  the  ground ;  but  one  of  them  relented  and 
said  —  '  Don't  let  us  kill  him  outright/  So 
they  drew  me  back,  and  coiled  a  rope  about 
my  body  —  probably  to  drag  me  through 
the  streets.  I  bowed  to  the  mob,  and  re 
questing  them  to  wait  patiently  until  I  could 
descend,  went  down  upon  a  ladder  that  was 
raised  for  that  purpose.  I  fortunately  ex 
tricated  myself  from  the  rope,  and  was 
seized  by  two  or  three  powerful  men,  to 
whose  firmness,  policy  and  muscular  energy 
I  am  probably  indebted  for  my  preservation. 
They  led  me  along  bareheaded  (for  I  had 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

lost  my  hat),  through  a  mighty  crowd,  ever 
and  anon  shouting,  *  He  shan't  be  hurt ! 
You  shan't  hurt  him!  Don't  hurt  him! 
He  is  an  American,'  etc.,  etc.  This  seemed 
to  excite  sympathy  among  many  in  the 
crowd,  and  they  reiterated  the  cry,  '  He 
shan't  be  hurt!'" 

At  this  point  we  will  turn  to  Charles  Bur- 
leigh's  tale :  "  Going  to  the  Post-office,  I  saw 
the  crowd  pouring  out  from  Wilson's  Lane 
into  State  Street  with  a  deal  of  clamor  and 
shouting,  and  heard  the  exulting  cry, 
*  They've  got  him  —  they've  got  him/  And 
so,  sure  enough,  they  had.  The  tide  set  to 
ward  the  south  door  of  the  City  Hall,  and 
in  a  few  minutes  I  saw  Garrison  between 
two  men  who  held  him  and  led  him  along, 
while  the  throng  pressed  on  every  side,  as 
if  eager  to  devour  him  alive.  His  head  was 
bare,  his  face  a  little  more  highly  colored 
than  in  his  most  tranquil  moments,  as  if 
flushed  by  moderate  exercise,  and  his  counte 
nance  composed."  In  the  upshot,  Mayor 
Lyman's  efforts  to  save  him  were  successful ; 
and  Garrison  was  forthwith  jailed  for  the 
night  as  a  disturber  of  the  peace. 

Throughout  this  episode  Garrison  acted 
with  wisdom  and  courage.  Had  he  behaved 
in  any  different  manner,  had  he  shown  fight, 
116 


THE   CRISIS 

as  Love  joy  did  at  Alton,  had  his  followers 
become  exasperated,  bloodshed  would  prob 
ably  have  followed  and  the  whole  contro 
versy  in  Boston  would  thenceforth  have  been 
overcast  by  the  spirit  of  civil  war.  The 
thing  to  be  noted  is  that  Garrison's  conduct 
during  this  mob  was  an  exemplification  of 
the  whole  Anti-slavery  policy,  which  had 
been  fully  set  out  in  the  documents  and  liter 
ature  of  the  movement  during  the  preceding 
five  years.  Moral  agitation  with  no  resort 
to  force,  no  resistance  to  force,  was  the  Ab 
olition  watchword. 

When  a  whole  age  is  completely  insane 
upon  some  subject,  sane  views  upon  that 
subject  will  seem  like  madness  to  the  age. 
It  was  thus  perfectly  normal  that  the  as 
sembly  of  moderate  and  holy  persons  who 
met  in  Philadelphia  to  form  the  national 
Anti-slavery  Society  in  1833,  and  parted,  as 
we  have  seen,  with  tears  and  prayers, — 
should  have  been  both  watched  and  guarded 
by  the  police.  These  men  seemed  to  that  age 
like  dangerous  malefactors.  So  also  was  it 
accordant  with  spiritual  law  that  Garrison 
should  have  been  shut  up  as  a  rioter  on  the 
night  following  the  Boston  mob.  He  was 
a  man  of  little  humor  where  his  principles 
were  at  stake,  and  could  see  nothing  in  the 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

arrest  but  a  ghastly  paradox;  whereas  in 
reality  that  arrest  is  a  charming  epitome  of 
the  times. 

How  much  danger  was  Garrison  in  while 
being  dragged  and  hustled  through  the 
streets  of  Boston?  Was  there  a  pot  of  hot 
tar  and  a  bath  of  feathers  waiting  at  some 
convenient  corner,  which  would  have  been 
produced  and  set  in  operation  on  the  Com 
mon,  but  for  Mayor  Lyman's  timely  inter 
ference?  Very  likely  there  was.  There 
seems  to  have  been  a  plan  to  maltreat 
Thompson,  which  plan  was  divulged  to  the 
public  through  broadsides  and  to  Garrison 
through  anonymous  letters,  one  of  the  let 
ters  being  friendly.  We  see  the  Garrison 
mob  to-day  as  the  sticking-point  of  violence 
in  Boston.  We  know  that  this  mob  was  not 
followed  by  a  series  of  mobs.  We  see 
that  it  did  no  damage  to  speak  of ;  and  there 
fore  we  cannot  help  thinking  of  it  as  a  harm 
less  affair.  But  a  mob  has  always  some 
thing  devilish  and  incalculable  in  its  action, 
and  a  mob  led  by  gentlemen,  a  mob  in  which 
the  ruffian  saw  that  he  was  supported  by  the 
Bank  President,  and  that  no  prosecution 
could  possibly  follow  in  the  wake  of  the  day, 
might  be  the  most  dangerous  of  all  mobs. 
The  experience  of  Birney  and  his  press  in 
118 


THE    CRISIS 

Ohio,  of  Lovejoy  and  his  press  in  Illinois, 
the  burning  of  Pennsylvania  Hall  in  Phila 
delphia  and  countless  other  acts  of  violence 
show  that  the  Abolitionists  did  right  to  be 
alarmed. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  they  were  seriously 
frightened.  Though  Garrison  and  the 
ladies  put  on  as  bold  a  front  as  they  could, 
they  did  not  feel  like  shaking  hands  with 
their  old  friend  Mayor  Lyman  and  regard 
ing  that  mob  as  a  joke.  There  was,  after 
all,  a  real  and  terrific  force  at  the  back  of 
the  mob.  It  was  the  mob  of  the  Richmond 
Whig,  of  the  Faneuil  Hall  Pro-Slavery  meet 
ing.  The  Southern  fire  had  moved  North, 
and  seemed  to  encircle  the  Anti-slavery  agi 
tators.  The  "  gentlemen  of  property  and 
standing  "  —  to  use  the  pompous  newspaper 
phrase  of  the  day, —  who  led  the  mob,  were 
actuated  by  one  of  the  major  passions  of  hu 
manity, —  defense  of  property. 

For  in  a  big  sense,  in  a  metaphorical  sense, 
the  South  was  right;  and  all  this  Abolition 
movement  was  a  servile  uprising.  The  slave 
heart  and  soul  had  somehow  come  into  com 
munion  with  the  Anti-slavery  heart  and  soul, 
and  together  they  were  generating  an  earth 
quake  beneath  the  slaver's  feet.  This 
whole  religious  message  is  mirrored  in 
119 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

"  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  a  book  which  it  took 
twenty  years  of  Abolition  to  make  the  soil 
for.  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin "  appearecM.n 
1852  and  is  to-day  our  key  to  that  whole 
epoch :  but  the  vision  of  that  book  was  in 
the  heart  of  the  Anti-slavery  people  long- 
before.  They  gave  that  vision  to  the  world ; 
they  gave  it  to  Harriet  Beecher.  The  pic 
tures  and  thoughts  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  " 
were  sown  into  the  mind  of  Harriet  Beecher 
as  a  child;  the  emotion  of  it  was  generated 
in  1829.  And  so  the  early  instinct  to  put 
down  this  whole  movement  as  a  servile  in 
surrection  had  justification  in  fact. 

As  a  general  rule  servile  insurrections  are 
put  down  by  officials;  by  judges,  sheriffs  and 
troops.  Historic  reasons  made  this  course 
not  feasible  at  the  North.  Therefore  the 
deluded  upper  classes  of  Boston,  who  had 
thrown  in  their  fortunes  with  slavery,  did 
what  all  determined  men  do  when  law  fails 
them, —  they  took  the  field  personally.  The 
women  who  marched  through  the  rioters 
trembled  with  antagonism,  if  not  with  fear. 
One  of  them  wrote  afterwards  : 

"  When  we  emerged  into  the  open  day 
light,  there  went  up  a  roar  of  rage  and  con 
tempt,  which  increased  when  they  saw  that 
we  did  not  intend  to  separate,  but  walked 
120 


THE    CRISIS 

in  regular  procession.  They  slowly  gave 
way  as  we  came  out.  As  far  as  we  could 
look  either  way  the  crowd  extended  —  evi 
dently  of  the  so-called  '  wealthy  and  respect 
able/  '  the  moral  worth/  '  the  influence  and 
standing/  We  saw  the  faces  of  those  we 
had,  till  now,  thought  friends;  men  whom 
we  never  before  met  without  giving  the 
hand  in  friendly  salutation;  men  whom  till 
now  we  should  have  called  upon  for  con 
demnation  of  ruffianism,  with  confidence 
that  the  appeal  would  be  answered." 

There  is  something  old-world,  something 
more  like  the  Eighteenth  Century  than  the 
Nineteenth  in  this  scene ;  I  would  not  miss  it 
out  of  our  history.  But  the  people  who  took 
part  in  it  could  never  think  of  it  lightly. 
It  was  too  real,  too  fierce,  too  dangerous. 
The  mob  was  too  near,  and  its  genteel  char 
acter  was  unpleasant.  I  have  at  times 
thought  that  the  Anti-slavery  people  were 
almost  ungrateful  to  Theodore  Lyman.  To 
them  he  was  a  man  who  had  not  done  his 
duty;  he  should  have  protected  their  sign. 
He  should  have  defied  and  dispersed  the 
rioters,  instead  of  conciliating  the  mob  and 
dispersing  the  ladies'  meeting.  He  should 
have  jailed  the  ringleaders  in  the  riot  and 
conducted  Garrison  in  safety  to  his  home. 

121 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

And  yet,  for  an  official  during  a  great  mania, 
and  for  a  man  by  nature  timid  during  a  riot, 
he  seems  to  me  to  have  done  fairly  well. 
He  appeared  upon  the  scene  of  conflict,  and 
in  the  end  saved  Garrison  from  the  clutches 
of  the  mob.  The  Abolitionists,  like  lawyers 
in  a  jury  case,  never  missed  a  point;  and 
the  points  against  Lyman  ^ere  obvious. 
He  was  a  pawn  in  their  demonstration.  It 
was  their  function  to  throw  up  a  clear  sil 
houette  of  the  times,  and  to  show  just  how 
far  Theodore  Lyman  had  fallen  short  of 
efficient  courage,  and  Boston,  of  liberty. 
We  cannot  hold  them  to  the  historic  per 
spective,  nor  expect  them  to  display  a  ju 
dicial  temper  upon  the  matter. 

I  myself,  however,  feel  grateful  to  Ly 
man  for  saving  Garrison;  though  I  also  re 
spect  Garrison  for  not  altering  his  criticism 
by  an  iota  because  of  the  personal  question. 
He  could  not  step  aside  for  a  moment  and 
play  the  part  of  philosophic  spectator.  As 
well  expect  a  point  which  is  moving 
in  a  curve  in  obedience  to  an  alge 
braical  formula  to  change  its  course  for 
reasons  of  politeness.  Let  us  not  forget 
that  all  these  people  were  wound  up,  and 
that  each  man  and  each  group  of  men  in  the 
struggle  was  following  a  track  like  one  of 

122 


THE   CRISIS 

the  heavenly  bodies;  being  governed  by  a 
logic,  unseen,  mighty,  and  terrible,  leading 
to  greater  things. 

The  Boston  mob  gives  a  barometrical  rec 
ord  of  conditions  in  the  North  in  1835. 
Every  village  had  its  Garrison,  its  Mayor 
Lyman,  its  Francis  Jackson.  Moved  by 
the  spectacle  of  Garrison's  persecution, 
Charles  Sumner,  Henry  I.  Bowditch  and 
Wendell  Phillips  became  converts  to  the 
cause.  Every  village  in  the  North  after 
October  21,  produced  its  Bowditch,  its  Sum 
ner,  its  Phillips.  There  were  now  six  State 
and  three  hundred  auxiliary  Anti-slavery 
Societies  all  formed  since  1831.  "So 
then,"  comments  Garrison,  "  we  derive  from 
our  opponents  these  instructive  but  paradox 
ical  facts  —  that  without  numbers,  we  are 
multitudinous;  that  without  power,  we  are 
sapping  the  foundations  of  the  Confederacy; 
that  without  a  plan,  we  are  hastening  the 
abolition  of  slavery;  and  without  reason 
or  talent  we  are  rapidly  converting  the 
nation." 

For  the  second  time  within  three  months 
it  became  wise  for  Garrison  to  leave  Bos 
ton.  His  landlord,  quite  naturally,  feared 
for  the  safety  of  his  house.  The  printing- 
office  of  the  Liberator  was  closed,  and  the 
123 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

work  was  done  clandestinely  elsewhere. 
During  this  winter  the  Abolitionists  kept 
rather  quiet ;  but  they  emerged  in  the  spring 
to  attend  the  Lunt  Committee, —  that  Com 
mittee  appointed  by  Governor  Everett  to  con 
sider  the  requests  from  Southern  legislatures 
that  Massachusetts  should  do  something  to 
suppress  Anti-slavery.  The  first  hearing  in 
the  matter  was  held  on  March  4th,  1836,  at 
the  State  House.  The  audience  was  so  large 
that  the  Hall  of  the  House  of  Representa 
tives  had  to  be  used.  Many  women,  includ 
ing  Harriet  Martineau,  were  there,  and  the 
social,  political  and  mercantile  classes  of 
Boston  were  represented.  When  the  meet 
ing  came  to  order  Samuel  J.  May  set  forth 
the  history  of  Abolition  and  showed  the 
mildness  of  its  methods.  Ellis  Gray  Lor- 
ing,  one  of  the  earliest  aristocrats  to  join 
the  cause,  reviewed  the  perfect  legality  of 
the  ideals  and  conduct  of  the  Anti-slavery 
Societies.  The  gentle  Charles  Follen,  a 
learned  and  saintly  man,  began  to  expound 
the  rights  of  man  and  to  explain  to  the  com 
mittee  the  natural  sequence  of  cause  and  ef 
fect  which  existed  between  the  Faneuil  Hall 
Pro-slavery  meeting  in  August  and  the  treat 
ment  of  Garrison  by  the  mob  in  October. 
Chairman  Lunt,  who  seems  to  have  been  a 
124 


THE    CRISIS 


narrow  partisan  who  little  understood  the 
issue  under  discussion,  and  who  thought  it 
his  duty  towards  his  constituents  to  brow 
beat  the  reformers,  declined  to  allow  Follen 
to  pursue  this  line  of  argument.  The  Abo 
litionists,  upon  this  rebuff,  brought  the  hear 
ing  promptly  to  a  close,  asserting  that  they 
must  be  allowed  to  make  their  own  argu 
ments  or  none.  They  immediately  peti 
tioned  the  Legislature  for  permission  to 
argue  their  own  case  in  their  own  way  be 
fore  the  Committee.  This  militant  front 
assumed  by  the  little  body  of  Protestants 
was  a  very  able  piece  of  tactics.  Their  real 
appeal  was,  of  course,  directed  to  the  grand 
public,  —  not  to  the  public  of  the  city  of 
Boston,  but  to  the  people  of  the  State  of 
Massachusetts  who  were  watching  the  whole 
proceeding  with  passionate  interest.  Would 
the  Legislature  dare  to  refuse  the  Abo 
litionists  permission  to  present  their  own 
arguments  in  their  own  way?  The  permis 
sion  was  granted. 

The  second  hearing  before  the  Lunt  Com 
mittee  was  a  stormy  one.  It  was  naturally 
crowded,  because  of  the  issues  raised  by  the 
first.  Mr.  Lunt  behaved,  strange  to  say, 
with  the  same  singular  stupidity  as  at  the 
first  meeting.  Let  us  remember  that  this 
125 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

hearing  was  for  the  moment  the  center  of 
the  great  storm  of  passion  that  had  moved 
up  from  the  South  during  the  preceding 
year  and  by  which  it  was  hoped  that  the 
Abolition  cause  would  be  engulfed  and  ob 
literated.  The  center  of  the  storm,  how 
ever,  is  perfectly  calm.  The  voice  that 
comes  from  it  is  not  a  still  small  voice,  but 
a  very  calm  voice.  It  is  the  voice  of  Sam 
uel  J.  May.  "  It  seemed,"  said  Mr.  May, 
addressing  the  chairman,  "  it  seemed  on  the 
4th  instant  that  the  chairman  considered 
that  we  came  here  by  his  grace  to  exculpate 
ourselves  from  the  charges  alleged  against 
us  by  the  legislatures  of  several  of  the 
Southern  States ;  and  that  we  were  not  to  be 
permitted  to  express  our  anxious  apprehen 
sions  of  the  effects  of  any  acts  by  our  Legis 
lature  intended  to  gratify  the  wishes  of  those 
States.  In  order,  therefore,  that  we  might 
appear  before  you  in  the  exercise  of  our 
right  as  free  citizens,  we  have  appealed  to 
the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives, 
and  have  their  permission  to  do  so.  Dr. 
Follen  was  setting  before  you  what  we  deem 
the  most  serious  evil  to  be  apprehended  from 
any  condemnatory  resolutions  which  the 
Legislature  might  be  induced  to  pass;  and 
if  he  is  not  permitted  to  press  this  upon 
126 


THE   CRISIS 

your  consideration  our  interview  with  the 
Committee  must  end  here." 

Mr.  Follen  was  allowed  by  the  chairman 
to  proceed,  but  the  following  speaker,  Rev. 
William  Goodell,  was  compelled  to  sit  down 
by  the  chairman.  He  was  at  the  moment  in 
the  midst  of  a  most  telling  quotation  from 
Gov.  McDuffy,  of  South  Carolina,  who  had 
said  that  "  the  laboring  population  of  no  na 
tion  on  earth  are  entitled  to  liberty  or  capa 
ble  of  enjoying  it."  "  Sit  down,"  said  Mr. 
Lunt,  "  the  Committee  will  hear  no  more  of 
it."  The  Abolitionists  immediately  and 
meekly  showed  their  compliance  by  begin 
ning  to  leave  the  Hall. 

This  is  magnificent  agitation :  it  is  impos 
sible  for  reformers  to  be  more  able  than  this. 
Such  conduct  sends  out  an  appeal  to  com 
mon  sense,  to  justice,  to  fair  play,  to  the 
mind  of  the  average  man  and  of  the  cour 
ageous  person  everywhere.  And  lo,  before 
the  Hall  had  emptied  itself,  there  came  a  re 
sponse  to  that  appeal,  a  response  from  one 
whose  mere  name  was  a  summary  of  the 
traditions  he  spoke  for.  "  The  audience 
here  began  to  leave  the  Hall,"  continues  Mr. 
May,  "  but  were  arrested  by  a  voice  in  their 
midst.  It  was  the  voice  of  Gamaliel  Brad 
ford,  not  a  member  of  the  Anti-slavery  So- 
127 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

ciety,  who  had  come  there  only  as  a  specta 
tor,  but  had  been  so  moved  by  what  he  had 
witnessed  that  he  pronounced  an  eloquent, 
thrilling,  impassioned,  but  respectful  ap 
peal  in  favor  of  free  discussion."  When 
Bradford  sat  down  Mr.  George  Bond,  one 
of  the  most  prominent  merchants  and  esti 
mable  gentlemen  of  Boston,  made  a  speech 
to  the  same  effect. 

Abolition  thus  began  to  penetrate  the  stal 
wart  and  sensible  classes.  It  could  no  longer 
be  regarded  as  merely"  the  infatuation  of 
foolish  persons.  There  were  still  to  be  years 
of  struggle,  but  the  loneliness  was  at  an  end. 
The  great  shattering  climax  of  all  this  pe 
riod  was  the  murder  of  Elijah  P.  Love  joy,  a 
young  Presbyterian  minister  and  native  of 
Maine,  on  November  7th,  1837,  at  Alton, 
111.  He  was  shot  down  as  he  emerged  from 
the  burning  building  in  which  the  last  of 
four  Anti-slavery  printing-presses  perished 
at  the  hands  of  infuriated  pro-slavery 
rioters.  Love  joy,  though  a  clergyman,  had 
determined  to  protect  his  rights  of  free 
speech  under  the  Constitutional  forms  of 
self-defense.  He  and  his  friends  had 
armed  themselves  according  to  law,  and 
were  under  the  protection  of  the  Mayor  of 
the  town.  They  thus  stood  like  the  embat- 
128 


THE   CRISIS 

tied  farmer  at  Lexington, —  nay,  more 
strongly,  for  these  men  were  not  Revolu 
tionists,  but  peaceful  citizens  resisting  illegal 
violence.  Lovejoy  was  ruthlessly  shot 
down  by  a  shower  of  bullets  from  the  street. 
Here  was  something  that  the  average  Ameri 
can  could  understand.  It  was  not  expressed 
in  biblical  language,  nor  did  it  come  from  a 
saint ;  but  it  spoke  to  the  fighting  instinct  in 
the  common  man. 

Nothing  except  John  Brown's  Raid  ever 
sent  such  a  shock  across  the  continent,  or  so 
stirred  the  North  to  understand  and  to  re 
sist  the  advance  of  slavery  as  Lovejoy's 
murder.  The  Abolitionists  of  Boston  im 
mediately  sought  Faneuil  Hall,  which  was 
at  first  refused.  Dr.  Channing,  head 
ing  the  free-speech  movement,  joined 
with  the  Abolitionists  in  claiming  the 
right  to  use  the  Hall.  It  was  felt  that  the 
great  public  was  behind  this  claim:  the  use 
of  the  Hall  was  granted.  There  followed 
that  meeting  to  which  the  dazzling  elo 
quence  of  Wendell  Phillips  has  given  im 
mortality.  It  was  a  free-speech,  not  an 
Abolition  meeting,  its  object  being  to  pro 
test  against  Love  joy's  murder  as  a  crime 
against  the  statutory  right  of  free  speech. 

We  see  here  a  very  different  situation 
129 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

r 

from  the  state  of  things  at  the  Faneuil  Hall 
Pro-slavery  meeting  of  1835,  when  slavery 
had  hired  the  Hall  and  held  the  floor.  At 
the  Lovejoy  meeting  freedom  had  hired  the 
Hall  and  held  the  floor.  Nevertheless  the 
meeting  was  to  some  extent  packed  by  the 
Pro-slavery  element  who  hoped  to  stampede 
it  in  favor  of  the  South.  Phillips  was  an 
unknown  young  lawyer,  the  scion  of  a  very 
distinguished  family,  and  he  had  gone  to  the 
meeting  without  any  intention  of  taking 
part  in  its  proceedings.  He  was  drawn  into 
the  fray  by  the  extraordinary  speech  of 
James  T.  Austin,  attorney-general  of  Mas 
sachusetts  and  leader  of  the  conservatives. 
Austin  declared  that  Lovejoy  was  not  only 
presumptuous  and  imprudent  while  he  lived, 
but  that  he  "  died  as  the  fool  dieth."  He 
compared  the  murderers  of  Lovejoy  with 
the  men  who  destroyed  the  tea  in  Boston 
harbor,  and  said  that  wherever  the  Aboli 
tion  fever  raged  there  were  mobs  and  mur 
ders.  Austin  was  vociferously  applauded! 
and  there  was  some  prospect  that  the  whole 
meeting  would  break  up  in  a  riot.  Phil 
lips  had  great  difficulty  in  getting  the  atten 
tion  of  the  audience.  "  Mr.  Chairman,"  he 
said,  "  we  have  met  for  the  freest  discussion 
of  these  resolutions  and  the  events  which 
130 


THE   CRISIS 

gave  rise  to  them."  (Cries  of  "  question," 
"hear  him,"  "go  on,"  "no  gagging" — 
etc.)  "I  hope  I  shall  be  permitted  to  ex 
press  my  surprise  at  the  sentiments  of  the 
last  speaker, —  surprise  not  only  at  such  sen 
timents  from  such  a  man,  but  at  the  applause 
they  have  received  within  these  walls.  A 
comparison  has  been  drawn  between  the 
events  of  the  Revolution  and  the  tragedy  at 
Alton.  We  have  heard  it  asserted  here,  in 
Faneuil  Hall,  that  Great  Britain  had  a  right 
to  tax  the  Colonies ;  and  we  have  heard  the 
mob  at  Alton,  the  drunken  murderers  of 
Lovejoy,  compared  to  those  patriot  fathers 
who  threw  the  tea  overboard!  (Great  ap 
plause.)  Fellow-citizens,  is  this  Faneuil 
Hall  doctrine?  "  ("  No,  no.")  After  giv 
ing  a  clear  exposition  of  the  difference  be 
tween  the  riot  at  Alton  and  the  Boston  Tea 
Party,  Phillips  continued :  "  Sir,  when  I 
heard  the  gentleman  lay  down  principles 
which  place  the  murderers  of  Alton  side  by 
side  with  Otis  and  Hancock,  with  Quincy 
and  Adams,  I  thought  those  pictured  lips 
(pointing  to  the  portraits  in  the  Hall) 
would  have  broken  into  voice  to  rebuke  the 
recreant  American, —  the  slanderer  of  the 
dead.  (Great  applause  and  counter  ap 
plause.)  The  gentleman  said  that  he  should 
131 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

sink  into  insignificance  if  he  dared  not  gain 
say  the  principles  of  these  resolutions. 
Sir,  for  the  sentiments  he  has  uttered,  on 
soil  consecrated  by  the  prayers  of  Puritans, 
and  the  blood  of  patriots,  the  earth  should 
have  yawned  and  swallowed  him  up." 
(Applause  and  hisses,  with  cries  of  "  Take 
that  back!  ")  The  uproar  became  so  great 
that  for  a  time  no  one  could  be  heard.  At 
length  the  Hon.  William  Sturgis  came  to 
Mr.  Phillips's  side  at  the  front  of  the  plat 
form.  He  was  met  with  cries  of  "  Phillips 
or  nobody,"  "  Make  him  take  back  rec 
reant;  he  shan't  go  on  till  he  takes  it 
back."  When  it  was  understood  that  Mr. 
Sturgis  meant  to  sustain,  not  to  interrupt 
Mr.  Phillips,  he  was  listened  to  and  said, 
"  I  did  not  come  here  to  take  part  in  this 
discussion,  nor  do  I  intend  to;  but  I  do  en 
treat  you,  fellow-citizens,  by  everything  you 
hold  sacred, —  I  conjure  you  by  every  asso 
ciation  connected  with  this  Hall,  consecrated 
by  our  Fathers  to  freedom  of  discussion, — 
that  you  listen  to  every  man  who  addresses 
you  in  a  decorous  manner."  Phillips  re 
sumed  his  speech  and  made  in  this,  his  de 
but,  one  of  the  best  remembered  triumphs  in 
a  life  of  oratory.  His  speech,  though  im 
perfectly  reported,  is  one  of  those  historic 
speeches  which  carry  their  eloquence  to  the 


THE    CRISIS 

reader,  even  through  the  disguise  of  print. 
When  Phillips  was  asked  afterwards  what 
his  thoughts  were  during  the  delivery  of  it, 
he  said  he  was  thinking  of  nothing  except 
the  carrying  of  resolutions.  This  he  ac 
complished  and  the  vote  of  the  meeting  was 
cast  for  freedom:  the  murderers  of  Love- 
joy  were  denounced. 

The  practical  importance  of  this  outcome 
to  the  Abolitionists  is  brought  home  to  us 
in  a  letter  written  by  one  of  them,  a  woman, 
to  a  friend  in  England.  "  Stout  men,  my 
husband  for  instance,  came  home  that  day 
and  lifted  up  their  voices  and  wept.  Dr. 
Channing  did  not  know  how  dangerous  an 
experiment,  as  people  count  danger,  he  ad 
ventured.  We  knew  that  we  must  send 
our  children  out  of  town  and  sleep  in  our 
day  garments  that  night,  unless  free  dis 
cussion  prevailed." 

The  burning  of  Pennsylvania  Hall,  in 
Philadelphia,  in  May,  1838,  was  among  the 
last  of  the  outrages  committed  during  this 
epoch  of  persecution.  There  seems  after 
this  to  have  been  a  simmering  down  of  the 
antagonism  of  the  public  to  the  Abolition 
ists,  and  it  was  not  until  1850  that  another 
great  attempt,  the  last  attempt,  was  made 
by  the  united  South  to  control  the  destinies 
of  the  North. 

133 


VI 

RETROSPECT  AND 
PROSPECT 

IT  seems  to  be  always  the  case  in  human  af 
fairs  that  conditions  grow  better  and  worse 
at  the  same  time.  An  evil  reaches  its  cli 
max  at  the  very  moment  that  the  corrective 
reform  is  making  a  hidden  march  upon  it 
from  an  unexpected  quarter.  And  so  this 
epoch  of  crisis  in  mob  .violence  against  Ab 
olition  must  be  recorded  as  the  epoch  during* 
which  Abolition  passed  from  the  stage  of 
moral  agitation  into  the  arena  of  practical 
politics.  The  Anti-slavery  men  had  begun 
by  heckling  the  clergy;  they  divided  up  the 
country  into  districts  and  sent  their  dreaded 
emissaries  with  lists  of  questions  which  the 
parsons  had  to  answer.  This  process  rent 
the  churches,  or  rather  it  revealed  the  fact 
that  the  churches  were  Pro-slavery.  In  like 
manner  the  questioning  of  all  candidates  for 
office  was  taken  up  by  the  Abolitionists. 
In.  the  year  1840  there  were  two  thnnsamL 
Anti-slavery  Societies  with  a  membership  of 


RETROSPECT   AND    PROSPECT 

two  hundred  thousand.  It  is  apparent  that 
the  political  parties  lifTrie  North  were  about 
to  feel  the  same  disruptive  power  run 
through  their  vitals  that  the  churches  had 
felt. 

If  you  take  up  a  history  of  the  United 
States,  or  the  biography  of  a  statesman  of 
this  time,  you  will  find  that  the  author  only 
begins  to  deal  with  Abolition  in  about  the 
year  1840,  that  is,  after  it  has  reached  the 
political  stage.  He  writes  perhaps  a  few 
pages,  as  Mr.  Rhodes  does,  about  the  rise 
of  the  movement,  taking  for  granted  that 
the  reader  knows  how  Abolition  got  started, 
and  why  it  was  able  so  soon  to  overshadow 
all  other  questions.  The  same  thing  occurs 
in  the  history  of  the  rise  of  Christianity; 
with  this  difference, —  that  the  early  stages 
of  Christianity  are  involved  in  obscurity; 
whereas  the  activities  of  the  early  years  of 
Abolition  are  recorded  in  accessible  and 
thrilling  books.  The  historian,  as  a  gen 
eral  rule,  gives  us  only  the  history  of 
politics.  He  seems  not  to  be  interested  in 
the  beginnings  of  things.  And  yet,  those 
beginnings  are  the  seed.  The  beginnings 
of  any  movement, —  the  epoch  when  it  is  in 
the  stage  of  idea,  of  agitation,  of  moral  im 
pulse,  and  before  it  has  assumed  a  shape 
135 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

that  can  be  termed  political, —  these  begin 
nings  show  its  nature.  In  them  you  find 
the  explanation  of  the  later  political  stages. 

The  history  of  the  Anti-slavery  struggle 
after  1840, —  that  is  to  say,  the  history  of 
political  Anti-slavery, —  has  been  well  an 
alyzed  and  understood,  and  can  be  traced 
in  the  biographies  of  our  statesmen.  I  am 
not  going  to  retrace  it  in  this  essay;  for  I 
believe  that  Garrison's  distinctive  work  was 
accomplished  before  1840.  I  shall  content 
myself  with  a  few  observations  which  apply 
to  the  whole  period  between  1830  and  1860, 
and  which  are  equally  true  of  the  agita 
tional  era  and  of  the  political  era  of  the 
struggle. 

The  spread  of  Anti-slavery  sentiment 
was  brought  about  through  the  doings  of 
the  Slave  Power.  From  the  time  when  the 
State  of  Georgia  in  1830  offered  a  reward 
for  the  arrest  of  Garrison,  till  South  Caro 
lina  seceded  in  1860,  the  education  of  the 
North  was  due  to  the  activity  of  the  South. 
While  North  and  South  were  in  ignorance 
of  this  fact,  the  form  of  the  reaction  and 
inter-action  between  Northern  and  South 
ern  elements  was  the  inevitable  form 
through  which  such  a  drama  must  pass. 
The  Slave  Power  believed  that  Garrison, 
136 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

with  some  almost  superhuman  agency,  was 
moving  upon  it  to  devour  it.     Slavery,  dur 
ing  the  whole  course  of   its  long  suicide, 
was,  in  its  own  view,  striving  to  save  it 
self    from    destruction.     The    Abolitionists 
brought   into   the    conflict  the   element   of 
Fate.     The  South  knew  that  no  form  of 
compromise   could  bind   Garrison.     It   felt 
this  with  the  instinct  of  the  hunted  animal. 
It  aimed  a  blow  at  the  enemy,  Abolition; 
and  it  struck  free  speech,  it  struck  the  right 
of  petition,  trial  by  jury,  education,  benevo 
lence,    common    sense.  \  Slavery    began    its 
death  agony  in  1830, "and  was  driven  from 
one  step  to  another  merely  as  a  consequence 
of  the  nature  of  man.     If  the  South  could 
have  smiled  at  Abolition,  if  it  could  have 
kept  its  temper  and  lent  no  hand  in  assist 
ing  the  Abolitionists  to  bring  forward  their 
cause,  then  the  way  of  the  reformers  would 
have   been    hard.     This    would    have   hap 
pened,  perhaps,  if  Anti-slavery  in  America 
had  been  a  pioneer  cause,  a  new  light  lead 
ing  the  world.     But  our  Anti-slavery  cause 
was  a  mere  means  of  catching  up  with  Eu 
rope.     The  moral   power  of   humanity   at 
large  prevented  South  Carolina  from  smil 
ing  at  Abolition.     The  slave-owners  trem 
bled  because  they  were  a  part  of  the  thing 
137 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

which  criticised  them.  Massachusetts  and 
South  Carolina  were  parts  of  that  modern 
world  in  which  their  heart-strings  met. 
This  solidarity  between  the  North  and  the 
South  was  the  cause  of  the  anguish,  and  the 
means  of  the  cure. 

In  the  early  days  of  any  movement  it  is 
only  the  expert  who  can  read  the  times  cor 
rectly.  The  lean  prophet,  in  whose  bosom 
the  turmoil  of  a  new  age  begins,  sees  proofs 
of  that  age  everywhere.  He  thinks  of 
nothing  else,  he  cares  for  nothing'  else. 
ihe_Abolitionists  could  see  in  1830 
what  the  averageTTrarr"  could  "not  understand 
till  1845, —  that  the  Slave  Power  was  a 
MblucrT which  controlled  the  politics  of  the 
North  and  which,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
could  stick  at  nothing  while  engaged  in  per 
petuating  that  control.  Garrison  or  May 
~"TCOnld  perceive  this  in  1828  by  taking  an  ob 
servation  of  Edward  Everett  or  of  Daniel 
Webster.  But  the  average  citizen  could 
not  see  it;  he  lacked  the  detachment.  His 
obfuscation  was  a  part  of  the  problem,  a 
part  of  the  evil  in  the  period.  In  1845  it 
required  the  Annexation  of  Texas  to  show 
to  the  man  in  the  street  those  same  truths 
which  the  Abolitionists  had  seen  so  plainly 
fifteen  years  before.  The  Annexation  of 
138 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

Texas  was  the  most  educational  of  all  the 
convulsive  demonstrations  of  the  South. 

Where  did  the  motive  power  reside  from 
which  all  these  changes  proceeded?  Was 
this  motive  power  the  conscience  of  the  Ab 
olitionists?  I  do  not  think  so.  The  Abo 
litionists  stand  nearer  to  a  sense  of  justice, 
nearer  to  rational  modern  life  than  the  rest 
of  our  compatriots  of  that  time.  But  the 
Abolitionists  were  not  the  motive  power; 
they  wrere  merely  the  point  of  entrance  of 
new  life  into  the  community.  Every 
stroke  of  his  pulse,  that  told  an  Abolition 
ist  that  something  must  be  done  about 
slavery,  could  perform  its  functions  only 
by  flashing  down  to  Georgia,  and  coming 
back  in  the  form  of  anger  and  of  grief. 
Every  argument  that  split  a  vestry,  or  left 
a  mind  ruined  was  necessary.  It  was  es 
sential  that  these  things  should  come. 

The  metaphysical  question  was  always 
the  same,  namely :  "  How  far  legal  argu 
ment  is  valid  when  it  contravenes  human 
feelings  ?  "  The  question  assumed  various 
forms  while  the  fire  was  eating  its  way 
through  society  towards  the  powder  maga 
zine;  but  the  substance  of  it  never  varied. 
The  whole  age-long  contest  in  all  its  Pro 
tean  forms  is  summarized  in  a  well-known 
139 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

legal  anecdote.  Judge  Harrington  of  Ver 
mont  is  said  to  have  told  the  attorney  for 
a  Southern  owner  who  was  seeking  to  re 
cover  a  fugitive  slave  in  1808,  that  his  "  evi 
dence  of  ownership "  was  insufficient. 
'  What  evidence  does  your  Honor  re 
quire?"  "  Nothing  less  than  a  bill  of  sale 
from  God  Almighty.'*  This  story  gives 
the  two  elements,  pity  and  business  inter 
est,  expressed  in  terms  of  constitutional  ar 
gument.  It  summarizes  the  labors  of  our 
statesmen, —  Webster,  Calhoun,  Sumner, 
Taney,  Douglas,  Lincoln, —  each  of  whom 
had  his  bout  with  the  problem.  The  unfor 
tunate  American  statesmen  who  were 
obliged  to  formulate  a  philosophy  upon  the 
matter  seem  to  me  like  that  procession  of 
hypocrites  in  Dante's  Purgatory,  robed  in 
mantles  of  lead.  They  emerge,  each  bent 
down  with  his  weight  of  logic,  blinded  by 
his  view  of  the  inherited  curse, —  nursing 
his  critique  of  the  constitution;  they  file 
across  the  pages  of  our  history  from  Jef 
ferson  to  Lincoln, —  sad,  perplexed  men. 

The  solution  given  by  Garrison  to  the 
puzzle  was  that  the  law  must  give  way,  that 
the  Constitution  was  of  no  importance, 
after  all.  This  is  what  any  American 
would  have  answered  had  the  question  con- 
140 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

cerned  the  Constitution  of  Switzerland  or 
of  Patagonia.  But,  for  some  reason,  our 
own  Constitution  was  regarded  differently. 
I  suppose  that  the  politics,  theology,  and 
formal  organization  of  the  whole  world  are 
never  so  important  as  they  pretend  to  be. 
The  element  of  material  interest  in  these 
matters  gives  them  their  awful  weight  to 
contemporaries.  When  we  are  dealing  with 
a  past  age  this  element  evaporates,  and  we 
see  clearly  that  most  of  the  importances  of 
the  world  have  no  claim  to  our  reverence. 
Now  when  a  man  has  felt  in  this  way  about 
his  own  age,  we  call  him  a  great  man ;  be 
cause  we  agree  with  him.  Tor  this  is  the 
test,  and  the  only  conceivable  test  of  great 
ness, —  that  a  man  shall  look  upon  his  own 
age,  and  see  it  in  the  same  light  as  that  in 
which  posterity  sees  it.  We  must  concede 
greatness  to  Garrison.  His  early  editorials 
upon  the  question  of  disunion  show  that  he 
viewed  our  Constitution  in  true  historical 
perspective  as  early  as  1832. 

Let  us  now  remember  some  of  the  phases 
of  the  nightmare  which,  like  a  continuous 
Dreyfus  case,  perplexed  all  honest  men,  all 
thinking  men  in  America  for  two  genera 
tions.  The  Constitution  was  so  inwoven 
with  our  social  life  that  the  conflict  be- 
141 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

tween  the  letter  and  the  spirit  was  ubiqui 
tous.  The  restless  probings  went  forward  at 
the  fireside,  in  the  club,  in  the  shop ;  no  pil 
low  was  free  from  them.  Slavery  covered 
every  sentiment  with  a  cloak.  Slavery  was 
in  literature,  in  religion,  in  custom.  This 
social,  daily,  domestic,  discussion  and  heart 
burn  was  the  true  means  of  regeneration. 
The  political  history  of  slavery  was  to  be 
the  outcome  of  this  fireside  discussion. 
The  constitutional  theory  which  any  man 
held  was,  in  this  epoch,  the  outcome  of  his 
personal  struggle  with  evil.  In  other 
words  the  slavery  question  had  become  the 
symbol  of  the  relation  between  good  and 
evil  in  practical  life.  We  notice  in  all  this 
the  tardiness  of  the  political  world  in  ab 
sorbing  new  ideas.  The  world  of  politics 
is  always  twenty  years  behind  the  world  of 
thought.  The  world  of  politics  lives  and 
works  in  ideals  which  are  twenty  years  old. 
The  result  of  all  the  upturnings  of  con 
science,  which  went  forward  in  millions  of 
private  breasts,  was  at  length  seen  in  the 
formation  of  the  Republican  Party.  By 
the  time  that  party  was  formed  one  could 
distinguish  (as  Mr.  Rhodes  points  out), 
two  classes  of  men  among  its  members :  — 
the  men  actuated  by  pity  for  the  slave,  of 
142 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

whom  SujyoriQr_  was  the  type;  and  the  men 
actuated  by  resentment  at  being  ruled  from 
the  South,  of  whom  Seward  was  the  type. 

j  r 

It  was,  however,  the  Abolition  tom-tom  that 
had  called  both  classes  from  the  deep;  and 
the  Seward  class  was  but  an  imperfect, 
half-awakened  example  of  the  true  thing. 
The  Seward  class  could  never  stand  fire. 
Its  courage, —  for  the  infusion  of  courage 
was  the  sole  function  of  that  tom-tom, —  its 
courage  was  in  the  head  and  not,  as  yet,  in 
the  vitals.  This  class  was  subject  to  splen 
did  visitations  of  new  idea;  and  yet  it  was 
also  subject  to  the  occasional  panic-stricken 
discovery  that  the  bottom  had  dropped  out 
after  all,  and  that  one  must  go  softly,  be 
cause  life  could  not  be  trusted. 

The   abstract,   inscrutable  nature   of  the  I 
contest  between  Freedom  and  Slavery  first  j 
began  to  be  revealed  to  the  politicians  in  | 
about  1850;  and  men  then  began  to  feel  that  j 
the  whole  historic  sequence  of  things  was 
a    fate-drama.     Even    then,    everybody    in 
politics  was  afraid  to  speak  plainly  about 
slavery.     It  required,   for  instance,  notable 
insight  as  well  as  great  political  couragd 
for  Lincoln  to  state  what  was  known  to 
everyone.      In    1858   he   took   his   political 
life  in  his  hands,  and  spoke  of  "  the  house 
143 


WILLIAM   LLOYD'  GARRISON 

divided  against  itself."'  His  associates 
were  scandalized  by  his  rashness,  and 
begged  him  to  omit  the  phrase.  Merciful 
heavens!  Had  not  this  house  been  di 
vided  against  itself  for  three-quarters  of  a 
century?  Yes,  truly,  this  whole  matter 
was  a  fate-drama,  and  in  a  deeper  sense 
than  Seward  imagined  or  than  even  Lin 
coln  could  guess.  Seward  with  his  percep 
tion  of  the  "  irrepressible  conflict  between 
opposing  and  enduring  forces,"  and  Lincoln 
with  his  vision  of  the  blood  of  white  men, 
drawn  by  the  sword,  which  should  repay 
the  blood  of  slaves  that  had  been  drawn  by 
the  lash, —  saw  only  the  main  crash  of  the 
drama.  The  reality  of  it  was  profounder, 
and  the  trailing  consequences  of  it  were  to 
be  more  terrible  than  they  suspected. 

The  intellectual  and  moral  heritages  of 
slavery  are  with  us  still.  The  timidity  of 
our  public  life  and  of  our  private  conversa 
tion  is  a  tradition  from  those  times,  which 
fifty  years  of  freedom  have  not  sufficed  to 
efface.  The  morbid  sensitiveness  of  the 
American  to  new  political  ideas  has  been  a 
mystery  to  Europe.  We  cannot  bear  to 
hear  a  proposition  plainly  put ;  —  or  let  me 
say,  we  are  only  recently  beginning  to  cast 
off  our  hothouse  condition,  and  to  bear  the 
144 


L  w** 

RETROSPECT   AND    PROSPECT 

sun  and  wind  of  the  natural  world.  I  do 
not  know  anything  which  measures  the 
timidity  of  the  American  nation  better  than 
the  moderation  of  Lincoln's  speeches,  a 
moderation  which  he  was  obliged  to  adopt 
in  order  to  be  listened  to.  He  was  always 
in  danger  of  showing  his  heart;  he  must 
avoid  the  taint  of  Abolition,  the  suspicion 
of  any  attack  upon  the  Constitution.  He 
must  step  gingerly  and  remember  what  part 
of  the  State  of  Illinois  he  is  in  at  the  mo 
ment.  Even  when  the  war  breaks  out  Lin 
coln  is  obliged  to  invent  a  way  of  looking 
at  that  war  which  shall  place  the  Union 
cause  in  a  popular  light.  He  is  obliged  to 
pretend  that  the  war  is  not  primarily  about 
slavery  at  all.  He  is  obliged  to  speak  about 
the  war  in  such  a  way  as  would  be  incom 
prehensible  to  any  one  who  is  not  a  close 
student  of  our  conditions.  He  must  re 
member  the  Border  States. 

Here  was  a  war  over  slavery  which  had 
been  visibly  brewing  for  more  than  a  life 
time.  The  Anti-slavery  party  comes  into 
power;  the  Slave  States  revolt  and  the 
question  is  whether  the  Government  shall 
prosecute  a  war  and  extinguish  slavery, — • 
or  not.  This  is  the  way  in  which  the  edu 
cated  foreigner  viewed  the  matter,  and  he 
145 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

was  right.  There  were,  however,  in  the 
Northern  and  Border  States,  many  educated 
Americans  who  had  from  their  cradles  been 
taught  to  regard  slavery  as  a  thing  almost 
sacred, —  a  thing  which  could  not  rightfully 
become  a  cause  of  war  between  the  States. 
Therefore  great  caution  had  to  be  used  in 
making  any  popular  statement  of  the  mat 
ter.  This  war  must  be  looked  upon  as  a 
war,  not  about  Slavery  but  about  Union. 
Lincoln  was  thus  obliged  to  befog  his  State 
papers  with  such  careful  statements  as  to 
his  being  for  the  Union  without  slavery,  or 
for  the  Union  with  slavery,  that  the  out 
sider  really  began  to  doubt  whether,  per 
haps,  Lincoln  meant  that  slavery  might  be 
retained  in  the  end.  Even  in  this  crisis  no 
one  in  political  life  was  allowed  to  speak 
in  plain  terms.  To  do  so  was  regarded  as 
most  unwise.  The  misguided  and  half- 
minded  man  of  America  had  been  trained 
to  believe  that  Slavery  was  sacred;  but 
for  the  Union  he  will  die.  So  long  as 
you  call  it  Union  he  is  ready  to  die  for 
humanity. 

Lincoln,   then,    during  the  years  of   his 
leadership  was  obliged  to  stoop  to  the  com 
plex,  peculiar,  and  inferior  character  of  the 
contemporary  mind.     He  was  one  of  the 
146 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

greatest  political  geniuses  and  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  characters  that  ever  lived; 
and  he  managed  somehow  to  be  intellectu 
ally  honest  and  very  nearly  frank  while  ful 
filling  his  mission.  Yet  I  can  never  read 
his  debates  with  Douglas  or  consider  his 
Border-State  policy  without  being  struck 
by  the  technical  nature  of  all  our  history. 
One  of  Lincoln's  chief  interests  in  life,  from 
early  manhood  onward,  lay  in  emancipa 
tion.  This  he  could  not  say  and  remain  in 
politics;  nay,  he  could  not  think  it  and  re 
main  in  politics.  He  could  not  quite  know 
himself  and  yet  remain  in  politics.  The 
awful  weight  of  a  creed  that  was  never 
quite  true, —  the  creed  of  the  Constitution, 
• — pressed  down  upon  the  intellects  of  our 
public  men.  This  was  the  dower  and  curse 
of  slavery. 

The  value  of  the  epoch  during  which 
the  curse  was  cast  off  is  that,  in 
reading  about  it,  we  can  see  thought  move, 
and  can  find  ourselves  in  sympathy  with  all 
shades  of  reform.  Let  us  take  an  example 
at  random,  as  one  might  take  a  drop  of 
water  for  a  sample  of  the  ocean. Tin  the 
dawn  of  the  Abolition  movement  its  ad 
herents  in  New  York  State,  who  were  re 
sponsible,  educated  and  propertied  persons, 
i47 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

were  a  little  afraid  of  the  Garrisonians  of 
Boston.  The  principles  of  the  New  York 
group  are  well  stated  by  William  Jay  in 
the  first  number  of  the  Emancipator,  and 
are  in  striking  contrast  to  the  declarations 
of  Garrison  in  the  first  number  of  the  Lib 
erator,  which  I  have  quoted  on  a  previous 
page.  Jay  writes: 

"  The  duty  and  policy  of  immediate 
emancipation,  although  clear  to  us,  are  not 
so  to  multitudes  of  people  who  abhor 
slavery  and  sincerely  wish  its  removal. 
They  take  it  for  granted,  no  matter  why 
or  wherefore,  that  if  the  slaves  were  now 
liberated  they  would  instantly  cut  the 
throats  and  fire  the  dwellings  of  their  ben 
efactors.  Hence  these  good  people  look 
upon  the  advocates  of  emancipation  as  a 
set  of  dangerous  fanatics,  who  are  jeop 
ardizing  the  peace  of  the  Southern  States 
and  riveting  the  fetters  of  the  slaves  by  the 
very  attempt  to  break  them.  In  their  opin 
ion  the  slaves  are  not  fit  for  freedom,  and 
therefore  it  is  necessary  to  wait  patiently 
till  they  are.  Now,  unless  these  patient 
waiters  can  be  brought  over  to  our  side, 
emancipation  is  hopeless ;  for,  first,  they  are 
an  immense  majority  of  all  among  us  who 
are  hostile  to  slavery;  and,  secondly,  they 
148 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

are  as  conscientious  in  their  opinions  as  we 
are  in  ours,  and  unless  converted  will  op 
pose  and  defeat  all  our  efforts.  But  how 
are  they  to  be  converted?  Only  by  the  ex 
hibition  of  Truth.  The  moral,  social,  and 
political  evils  of  slavery  are  but  imperfectly 
known  and  considered.  These  should  be 
portrayed  in  strong  but  true  colors,  and  it 
would  not  be  difficult  to  prove  that,  how 
ever  inconvenient  and  dangerous  emanci 
pation  may  be,  the  continuance  of  slavery 
must  be  infinitely  more  inconvenient  and 
dangerous. 

"  Constitutional  restrictions,  independent 
of  other  considerations,  forbid  all  other 
than  moral  interference  with  slavery  in  the 
Southern  States.  But  we  have  as  good  and 
perfect  a  right  to  exhort  slaveholders  to 
liberate  their  slaves  as  we  have  to  exhort 
them  to  practice  any  virtue  or  avoid  any 
vice.  Nay,  we  have  not  only  the  right,  but 
under  certain  circumstances  it  may  be  our 
duty  to  give  such  advice ;  and  while  we  con 
fine  ourselves  within  the  boundaries  of  right 
and  duty,  we  may  and  ought  to  disregard 
the  threats  and  denunciations  by  which  we 
may  be  assailed. 

"  The  question  of  slavery  in  the  District 
of  Columbia  is  totally  distinct,  as  far  as  we 
149 


WILLIAM  LLOYD   GARRISON 

are  concerned,  from  that  of  slavery  in  the 
Southern  States. 

"  As  a  member  of  Congress,  I  should 
think  myself  no  more  authorized  to  legis 
late  for  the  slaves  in  Virginia  than  for  the 
serfs  of  Russia.  But  Congress  has  full 
authority  to  abolish  slavery  in  the  District, 
and  I  think  it  to  be  its  duty  to  do  so.  The 
public  need  information  respecting  the 
abominations  committed  at  Washington 
with  the  sanction  of  their  Representatives 
—  abominations  which  will  cease  whenever 
those  Representatives  please.  If  this  sub 
ject  is  fully  and  ably  pressed  upon  the  at 
tention  of  our  electors,  they  may  perhaps 
be  induced  to  require  pledges  from  candi 
dates  for  Congress  for  their  votes  for  the 
removal  of  this  foul  stain  from  our  National 
Government.  As  to  the  Colonization  So 
ciety,  it  is  neither  a  wicked  conspiracy  upon 
the  one  hand  nor  a  panacea  for  slavery  on 
the  other.  Many  good  and  wise  men  be 
long  to  it  and  believe  in  its  efficacy." 

These  New  York  men  are  in  a  more  ra 
tional  state  of  mind  than  Garrison  was. 
When  in  1833  Samuel  J.  May  begged  Wil 
liam  Jay  to  join  in  forming  a  national  An 
ti-slavery  Society,  Jay  paused.  I  suppose 
he  had  been  reading  the  Liberator.  He  de- 
150 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

clined  to  join,  on  the  ground  that  the  local 
Societies  could  do  the  work  as  well  for  the 
time  being,  and  that  the  great  objection  to 
Anti-slavery  Societies  was  that  they  aimed 
at  unconstitutional  interference  with 
slavery.  He  suggested  that  if  a  National 
Society  was  to  be  formed,  it  should  show, 
by  its  constitution,  that  the  objects  were  le 
gal,  that  is  to  say,  it  should  acknowledge  the 
exclusive  rights  of  the  Southern  States  to 
settle  the  matter  of  slavery  within  their  own 
boundaries,  and  claim  only  the  right  to  urge 
Congress  to  abolish  slavery  in  the  District 
of  Columbia,  and  the  territories. 

The  new  Society  did,  in  fact,  adopt  care 
fully  drawn  provisions  expressive  of  Jay's 
idea,  and  Mr.  Tuckerman,  in  his  memoir 
of  Jay,  comments  upon  the  circumstance  as 
follows :  "  Looked  at  by  the  light  of  sub 
sequent  events,  the  importance  of  placing 
Anti-slavery  upon  a  Constitutional  basis 
cannot  be  over-rated.  Upon  the  principles 
thus  distinctly  avowed  rested  the  moral  and 
political  strength  of  the  movement  during 
the  struggle  of  thirty  years."  It  is  impos 
sible  not  to  feel  the  truth  of  this  reflection. 
The  average  American  mind  could  only 
deal  with  the  slavery  matter  when  presented 
in  legal  form.  Mr.  Garrison,  in  spite  of 
151 


1 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

his  denunciation  of  the  Union,  felt  the  force 
of  this  appeal  to  law  and  order.  He  actu 
ally  signed  the  declarations  of  the  new  So 
ciety,  which  put  the  movement  on  a  con 
servative  basis,  and  he  wrote  editorially  in 
the  Liberator  as  follows :  "  Abolitionists  as 
clearly  understand  and  as  sacredly  regard 
the  Constitutional  powers  of  Congress  as 
do  their  traducers,  and  they  know  and  have 
again  and  again  asserted  that  Congress  has 
no  more  rightful  authority  to  sit  in  judg 
ment  upon  Southern  slavery  than  it  has  to 
legislate  upon  the  abolition  of  slavery  in 
the  French  colonies."  This  editorial  is  en 
tirely  out  of  key  with  Mr.  Garrison's  fun 
damental  beliefs,  as  we  shall  see  later.  We 
have  to  remember,  in  reviewing  any  con 
vulsive  epoch  in  history,  how  frequently 
men,  even  great  men,  have  been  jolted  for 
ward  and  back  between  conflicting  points  of 
view.  Garrison  was  subject  to  these  re 
vulsions,  and  was  totally  unconscious  of  his 
inconsistencies. 

The  point  I  would  here  make  is  that  all 
these  various  and  contradictory  dogmas 
were  necessary.  Each  one  was  an  inev 
itable  progression,  going  on  in  somebody's 
mind,  and  each  helped  to  move  the  argu 
ment  along.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  atti- 
152 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

tude  of  Jay  in  recommending  legal  action 
only,  and  the  attitude  of  Garrison  in  de 
nouncing  the  Constitution,  as  he  did  most 
of  the  time,  were  both  of  them  necessary 
to  the  working  out  of  the  problem. 

There  was  another  element  of  complica 
tion  which  assisted  in  disintegrating  the 
Anti-slavery  cause.  As  time  went  on 
Garrison  kept  confiding  his  new  de 
velopments  and  changes  in  opinion 
to  the  columns  of  the  Liberator.  His 
views  upon  Peace,  No-government,  Wom 
an's  Rights,  Non-resistance,  as  they  formed 
themselves  within  him,  were  advocated 
with  an  incredible  volubility  which  dis 
quieted  many  other  Abolitionists.  After 
one  or  two  attempts  at  schism,  the  more 
conservative  Abolitionists  formed  a  new 
Society  which  went  by  the  name  of  the 
New  Organization.  With  whom  shall  we 
sympathize  among  all  these  contending 
sects?  Manifestly  with  them  all.  Let  us 
examine  the  case  of  Woman's  Rights. 
Women  had  been  working  in  the  Massa 
chusetts  Society  and  in  the  National  So 
ciety  from  the  beginning.  Women  were 
among  the  ablest,  the  most  effective,  the 
most  saintly,  the  most  distinguished,  of  the 
workers  in  the  Abolition  cause.  Should 
i53 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

they  be  admitted  to  equal  fellowship  or  not  ? 
Manifestly  they  must  be  so  admitted.  Yet 
to  do  this  identified  the  cause  of  Abolition 
with  the  theory  of  Woman's  Rights,  a  con 
clusion  most  repugnant  to  many  excellent 
Anti-slavery  people.  There  must  follow, 
then,  a  multiplication  of  sects;  this  was  one 
of  the  logical  necessities  of  the  situation. 

Now  there  was  no  person  in  the  Aboli 
tion  camp  who  understood  these  matters 
from  a  philosophic  point  of  view.  The 
New  Organizationists  were  struggling  to 
keep  the  cause  pure,  to  keep  it  from  being 
mixed  up  with  other  causes  and  ideas,  such 
as  Woman's  Rights,  Non-resistance,  etc. 
Garrison  was  also  struggling  to  keep  the 
cause  pure;  to  prevent  it  from  being  di 
luted,  and  from  falling  into  the  hands  of 
sectarians,  Presbyterians,  Methodists,  etc. 
In  1840  we  find  the  Garrisonians  chartering 
a  steamboat,  and  taking  several  hundred 
men  and  women  from  Massachusetts,  in 
order  to  "  carry  "  the  annual  meeting  in  New 
York  City  for  his  ideas.  Jay  seems  to  have 
understood  that  the  confusion  was  past  cure, 
though  he  di.d  not  quite  perceive  that  it 
was  inevitable.  His  personal  course  was  to 
resign  from  the  Anti-slavery  organizations 
when  they  veered  away  from  Constitutional 
iS4 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

methods.  He  again  became  a  free  lance. 
In  1846  he  writes:  "Our  Anti-slavery  So 
cieties  are  for  the  most  part  virtually  de 
funct.  Anti-slavery  Conventions  are  what 
ever  the  leaders  present  happen  to  be ;  some 
times  disgustingly  irreligious,  and  very 
often  Jacobinical  and  disorganizing;  and 
frequently  prescriptive  of  such  of  their 
brethren  who  will  not  consent  to  render 
Abolition  a  mere  instrument  for  effecting 
certain  political  changes  having  no  relation 
whatever  to  slavery." 

Now  let  us  take  one  step  further  and 
note  this:  —  that  at  the  time  of  the  An 
nexation  of  Texas,  Jay  had  arrived  at  Gar 
rison's  views  as  to  the  necessity  of  breaking 
up  the  Union.  "  Should  the  slaveholders 
succeed,"  says  Jay,  "  in  their  design  of  an 
nexing  Texas,  then  indeed  would  I  not 
merely  discuss,  but  with  all  my  powers 
would  I  advocate  an  immediate  dissolution. 
I  love  my  children,  my  friends,  my  country 
too  well  to  leave  them  the  prey  to  the  ac 
cursed  Government  which  would  be  sure 
to  follow."  And  again :  "  A  separation  will 
be  more  easily  effected  now  than  when  the 
relative  strength  of  the  South  shall  have 
been  greatly  augmented.  Hereafter  we 
shall  be  as  serfs  rebelling  against  their 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

bonds.  Now,  if  the  North  pleases,  we  may 
dissolve  the  Union  without  spilling  a  drop 
of  blood." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  sympathize  with 
the  state  of  mind  revealed  in  these  last  sen 
tences, —  a  state  of  mind  to  which  Jay  has 
been  brought  by  the  march  of  events.  The 
truth  is  that  the  whole  vast  problem  was 
constantly  moving  forward.  Not  only 
Garrison  and  Jay,  but  every  soul  who  lived 
in  America  during  these  years  held  fluctuat 
ing  views  about  the  matter  of  slavery;  and 
the  complex  controversy  moved  forward 
like  a  glacier,  cracking  and  bending  and 
groaning,  and  marking  the  everlasting  rocks 
as  it  progressed.  In  the  end,  we  come  to 
see  that  the  whole  struggle  was  a  solid 
struggle,  an  ever-changing  Unity,  an  or 
chestra  in  which  all  the  various  instruments 
were  interdependent  and  responsive  to  one 
another.  We  see  also  that  each  individual 
then  living  was  somehow  a  little  microcosm 
which  reflected  and  had  relations  with  the 
whole  moving  miracle;  and  that  every  ele 
ment  of  the  great  universe  was  represented 
in  him.  We  can  perceive  plainly,  to-day, 
how  necessary  it  was  that  each  error  should 
be  made;  that  Garrison  should  issue  his  in 
consecutive  fulminations  of  dogma,  and 
156 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 

that  Jay  should  retire  in  gloom,  when  the 
cause  entered  politics.  We  see  how  inev 
itable  it  was  that  the  cause  should  be  be 
trayed  and  polluted,  soiled  and  kneaded  into 
the  mire  of  the  world,  woven  into  the  web 
of  American  life.  Gradually  the  leaven 
was  invading  and  qualifying  the  whole 
lump. 


157 


VII 
THE    MAN   OF   ACTION 

IN  calling  up  the  spirit  of  Garrison  out  of 
the  irrecoverable  past  we  must  never  for 
get  that  he  was  but  a  part  of  something;  — 
we  must  call  up  the  whole  epoch.  Garrison 
was  as  much  an  outcome  of  slavery  as  was 
"  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  or  John  C.  Calhoun. 
JHe  is  a  spiritual  product;  he  is  that  sup 
pressed  part  of  mail's  nature,  which,  could 
not  £o-exfst  with  slavery.  He  is  like  a 
"fiery  saTaman3er,  who  should  emerge  dur 
ing  a  glacial  epoch, —  crawling  out  from  a 
volcano  that  was  all  the  time  hidden  beneath 
the  ice-crust.  It  is  through  the  hot  breath 
of  this  salamander  that  verdure  is  to  be 
brought  back  to  the  earth,  and  the  benign 
climate  of  modern  life  restored  to  America. 
To  the  conservative  minds  of  his  own  time 
he  appeared  to  be  a  monster;  and  he  was  a 
monster, —  a  monster  of  virtue,  a  monster 
of  love,  a  monster  of  power. 

Let  us  not  judge  but  only  examine  him. 
Fortunately  the  materials  are  abundant,  the 
158 


THE   MAN    OF   ACTION 

record  is  complete.  His  life  in  four  enor 
mous  volumes  has  been  written  by  his  chil 
dren;  and  the  children  of  Garrison  sup 
press  nothing.  We  are  brought  into  ab 
solute  contact  with  all  of  Garrison's  singu 
larities.  This  biography  is  not  a  critical 
work:  it  is,  one  might  say,  a  work  of  idol 
atry.  Every  little  battle  is  fought  over 
again,  and  every  word  or  gesture  of  the 
protagonist  is  deemed  sacred.  The  reader 
feels  oppressed  by  the  one-sidedness  of  this 
procedure.  One  becomes  sorry  for  the 
other  actors  in  the  great  drama :  for 
after  all,  these  men  could  not  help 
it  that  they  were  not  Garrison;  they 
seem  to  live  out  their  lives  under 
the  pitiful  inferiority  of  not  being  Garri 
son.  For  instance,  Cassius  M.  Clay  of 
Kentucky  went  to  Yale  College,  and  was, 
as  a  youth,  converted  to  Anti-slavery  by  a 
lecture  of  Garrison's  at  New  Haven.  Clay 
returned  to  Kentucky,  emancipated  his 
slaves,  and  thereafter  made  relentless  war 
on  slavery,  thus  furnishing,  say  Garrison's 
biographers,  "  an  example  without  parallel 
both  of  heroism  and  of  the  folly  of  attempt 
ing  to  undermine  the  slave  power  from 
within."  The  italics  are  mine.  But  why 
do  Garrison's  children  think  it  folly  for  a 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

Southerner  to  agitate  against  slavery  in 
Kentucky?  It  seems  to  me  that  to  do  so 
was  right  I  believe  that  the  agitation  of 
Clay  in  Kentucky  somehow  went  to  a  spot 
in  the  slavery  question  that  nothing  else 
could  have  reached.  It  affected  Garrison 
himself  as  nothing  else  ever  affected  him :  it 
softened  him.  It  was  the  conduct  of  Clay 
and  Rankin  (another  Southerner)  which 
caused  Garrison  to  offer  a  resolution  at  the 
Cincinnati  convention  in  1853,  in  which 
he  stated  that  the  Abolitionists  of  the  coun 
try  were  as  much  interested  in  the  welfare 
of  the  slaveholders  as  they  were  in  the  ele 
vation  of  the  slaves.  His  habitual  attitude 
towards  the  slaveholders  had  always  been, 
"  We  do  not  acknowledge  them  to  be 
within  the  pale  of  Christianity,  of  Repub 
licanism,  of  humanity.  This  we  say  dis 
passionately,  and  not  for  the  sake  of  using 
strong  language." 

Garrison,  then,  was  touched  by  the  almost 
miraculous  courage  of  Clay.  If  there  had 
been  a  few  more  such  Southern  Abolition 
ists,  the  bitterness  of  this  whole  epoch  might 
have  been  qualified.  It  was,  however,  one  of 
the  stock  taunts  made  against  Garrison  that 
he  did  not  go  South  to  agitate;  and,  there 
fore,  these  biographers  reason  that  any  agita- 
160 


THE   MAN    OF   ACTION 

tion  of  slavery  in  the  South  must  be  "  folly." 
The  four  great  volumes  contain  frequent 
little  hacks  and  side-cuts  out  of  old  contro 
versies  which  are  wearying  to  the  modern 
reader.  Nevertheless,  the  volumes  contain 
also  such  mountains  of  precious  ore,  such  a 
painstaking  recovery  of  everything  germane 
to  the  subject,  such  an  angel-minded  pres 
entation  of  the  blind  side  of  Garrison,  with 
the  record  of  things  said  against  him, — 
that  the  reader  is  left  with  nothing  but 
gratitude  to  these  children  who  are  so  like 
the  father  that  their  very  deficiencies, 
rightly  taken,  illuminate  their  subject.  The 
children  of  Garrison  have  not  written  a  phil 
osophic  history.*  But  there  are  other  things 
in  the  world  besides  criticism,  and  some 
things  more  rare  and  more  beautiful  than  the 
critical  intellect.  There  is  praise  and  wor 
ship  ;  there  is  reverence  and  love ;  there  is  the 
girasole  that  turns  towards  the  sun  and  fol 
lows  him  from  the  orient  to  his  setting, 

*  "Writing  not  without  bias,  surely,  but  in  a  spirit 
emulous  of  the  absolute  fairness  which  distinguished 
our  father,  we  have  done  little  more  than  coordinate 
materials  to  serve  posterity  in  forming  that  judgment 
of  him  which  we  have  no  desire  to  forestall.  In  a 
literary  point  of  view,  we  have  aimed  at  nothing 
more  than  clearness,  sequence  and  proportion." — Life 
of  G.  Preface  xii. 

161 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

ever  in  a  dream,  ever  without  knowing  that 
he  has  changed  his  position,  because  for  her 
he  has  not  moved  or  changed;  to  her  he  is 
only  himself. 

Garrison  was  a  man  of  action,  that  is  to 
say,  a  man  10  whom  ideas  were  reveaiecTm 
relation  to  passing  events,  and  who  saw  in 
ideas  the  levers  and  weapons  with  which  he 
rcn'giiLact  upon  the  world.  A  seer  on  the 
other  hand  is  "a  man  who  views  passing 
events  by  the  light  of  ideas,  and  who 
counts  upon  his  vision,  not  upon  his  action, 
for  influence.  The  seer  feels  that  the  mere 
utterance  of  his  thought,  nay  the  mere 
vision  of  it,  fulfills  his  function.  Garrison 
."Was  not  a  man  of  this  kind.  His  mission 
<was  more  lowly,  more  popular,  more  vis 
ible;  and  his  intellectual  grasp  was  re- 
;  stricted  and  uncertain.  Garrison  was  a 
man  of  the  market-place.  Language  to 
im  was  not  the  mere  means  of  stating 
truth,  but  a  mace  to  break  open  a  jail.  He 
was  to  be  the  instrument  of  great  and  rapid 
changes  in  public  opinion  during  an  epoch 
of  terrible  and  fluctuating  excitement.  The 
thing  which  he  is  to  see,  to  say,  and  to  pro 
claim,  from  moment  to  moment,  is  as 
freshly  given  to  him  by  prodigal  nature,  is 
as  truly  spontaneous,  as  the  song  of  the 
162 


s« 
h 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

thrush.  He  never  calculates,  he  acts  upon 
inspiration;  he  is  always  ingenuous,  inno 
cent,  self-poised,  and,  as  it  were,  inside  of 
some  self-acting  machinery  which  controls 
his  course,  and  rolls  out  the  carpet  of  his 
life  for  him  to  walk  on.  We  must  remem 
ber  this;  for  it  is  almost  impossible  not  to 
use  words  which  imply  the  contrary  in  de 
scribing  the  acts  of  the  practical  man, —  the 
man  who  utters  sharp  sayings  in  order  to 
gain  attention,  the  man  who  gives  no  quar 
ter  when  in  the  ring. 

In  reviewing  the  life  of  such  a  man  we 
must  take  the  logic  of  it  as  a  whole;  we 
must  feel  the  unity  of  it  as  an  organic  proc 
ess  and  torrent  of  force.  It  will  contain 
many  breaks  in  metaphysical  unity;  yet 
through  these  breaks  may  be  seen  the  gush 
ing  stream  of  the  spirit.  I  believe  that  Gar 
rison  shifted  his  ground  and  changed  his 
mind  less  often  than  most  men  of  that 
kaleidoscopic  epoch.  But  we  must  not  try 
to  make  him  out  more  consistent  than  he 
was.  All  politics,  including  reform  agita 
tion,  proceeds  from  day  to  day  and  from 
year  to  year  under  the  illusion  that  the 
thing  in  hand  is  more  important  than  it 
really  is.  All  the  actors  are  at  every  mo 
ment  somewhat  deceived;  and  to  each  of 
163 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

them  the  thing  in  hand  ever  a  little  blots 
out  the  sky.  The  agitator  lives  in  a  realm 
of  exaggeration,  of  broadsides  and  italic 
types,  of  stampings  of  the  foot  and  clench- 
ings  of  the  hand.  He  uses  the  terms  and 
phrases  of  immortal  truth  to  clamp  together 
his  leaky  raft.  The  "  belle  response "  of 
the  martyr,  the  deep  apothegm  of  the  sage, 
and  the  words  of  Christ,  are  ever  on  his 
lips.  Such  things  pass  muster  in  politics 
without  exciting  comment.  And  yet,  these 
statements  of  ideal  truth,  like  the  axioms  of 
arithmetic,  never  quite  square  with  the  ma 
terial  world.  They  can  only  be  felt  and  be 
lieved  in  mentally.  You  can  never  find  or 
measure  out  an  exact  pound  of  anything  or 
lay  off  a  true  mile;  nor  can  you  assign  any 
accurate  value  to  the  influence  of  a  good 
deed.  Nevertheless,  the  inaccuracy  which 
is  permissible  in  the  market-place  is  very 
much  greater  than  the  inaccuracy  permissi 
ble  to  the  historian  who  sits  in  his  closet 
endeavoring  to  think  clearly  upon  the  mat 
ter. 

The  source  of  Garrison's  power  was  the 
Bible.  From  his  earliest  days  he  read  the 
Bible  constantly,  and  prayed  constantly.  It 
was  with  this  fire  that  he  started  his  con 
flagration.  Now  the  Bible  is  many  things. 
164 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

It  is  a  key  to  metaphysical  truth,  it  is  a 
compendium  of  large  human  wisdom,  it  is 
a  code  of  ethics,  it  is  the  history  of  a  race, 
and  many  other  things  beside.  To  Garri 
son,  the  Bible  was  the  many-piped  organ  to 
which  he  sang  the  song  of  his  life,  and  the 
arsenal  from  which  he  drew  the  weapons 
of  his  warfare.  I  doubt  if  any  man  ever 
knew  the  Bible  so  well,  or  could  produce  a 
text  to  fit  a  political  emergency  with  such 
startling  felicity  as  Garrison.  Take  for 
example,  the  text  provided  by  him  for  Wen 
dell  Phillips's  speech  on  the  Sunday  morn 
ing  following  Lincoln's  call  for  troops  in 
1861.  "  Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord;  Ye 
have  not  hearkened  unto  me  in  proclaiming 
liberty  everyone  to  his  brother,  and  every 
man  to  his  neighbor:  behold,  I  proclaim  a 
liberty  for  you,  saith  the  Lord,  to  the  sword, 
to  the  pestilence,  and  to  the  famine." 

I  doubt  whether  Cromwell  or  Milton 
could  have  rivaled  Garrison  in  this  field  of 
quotation;  and  the  power  of  quotation  is  as 
dreadful  a  weapon  as  any  which  the  human 
intellect  can  forge.  From  his  boyhood  up 
ward  Garrison's  mind  was  soaked  in  the 
Bible  and  in  no  other  book.  His  "  Causes  " 
are  all  drawn  from  the  Bible,  and  most  of 
them  may  be  traced  to  the  phrases  and 
165 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

thoughts  of  Christ,  as  for  instance  Peace 
(Peace    I   give   unto   you),    Perfectionism 
(Be  ye  therefore  perfect),   Non-resistance 
(Resist     not      evil),      Anti-sabbatarianism 
(The  Lord  is  Lord  of  the  Sabbath).     So 
also,  a  prejudice  against  all  fixed  forms  of 
worship,   against   the   authority   of   human 
government,   against  every  binding  of  the 
spirit  into  conformity  with  human  law, — 
all  these  things  grew  up  in  Garrison's  mind 
out  of  his  Bible  reading;  as  they  have  done 
in  the  minds  of  so  many  other  men  before 
and  after  him.     He,  himself,  was  not  going 
to  be  bound,  and  never  was  bound,  by  any 
declaration  nor  by  any  document.     He  even 
arrived  at  distrusting  the  Bible  itself,  per 
ceiving  that  the   Bible   itself  was  often  a 
tyrant, —  much  as  Christ  saw  the  tyranny  of 
the  law  of  Moses.     All  this  part  of  Garri 
son's  mental  activity  is  his  true  vocation. 
Here  he  rages  like  a  lion  of  Judah.     By 
these  onslaughts  he  is  freeing  people  from 
their  mental  bonds :  he  is  shaking  down  the 
palaces  of  Babylon. 

His  age  was  the  age  of  social  experi 
ments,  and  he  was  ever  ready  to  take  on  a 
new  one.  This  hospitality  to  new  dogmas 
annoyed  his  associates,  and  led,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  revolts,  schisms,  and  heresies  in 
166 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

the  Anti-slavery  ranks.  Garrison  seems  to 
have  been  assailed  by  such  multitudinous 
revelations  from  on  high  that  he  was 
obliged  to  publish  one  dispensation  in  order 
to  clear  the  wires  for  the  next.  There  is 
one  of  these  manifestoes  which  reveals  the 
impromptu  character  of  them  all.  "  De 
spite  its  length,"  say  the  biographers,  "  the 
greater  part  of  this  important  document 
must  be  given  here."  There  follow  several 
pages  of  fine  print,  concerning  the  causes 
uppermost  in  Garrison's  mind,  which  evi 
dently  had  filled  up  all  the  space  in  the  Liber 
ator,  or  used  up  all  the  ink  in  the  office ;  and 
yet  it  appears  at  the  close,  that  Garrison  has 
forgotton  to  say  anything  about  woman's 
rights.  And  so  he  calls  out,  like  a  man 
upon  a  departing  stage-coach :  "  As  our  ob 
ject  is  universal  emancipation  to  redeem 
women  as  well  as  men  from  a  servile  to  an 
equal  condition, —  we  shall  go  for  the 
RIGHTS  OF  WOMEN  to  their  utmost  extent." 
In  those  days  societies  were  founded  for 
everything.  No  one  ever  paused  to  con 
sider  what  things  could  or  could  not  be 
accomplished  through  organization,  nor 
how  far  the  sayings  of  Christ  were  parts  of 
one  another,  nor  whether  at  the  bottom  of 
all  these  questions  there  lay  some  truth 
167 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

which  enveloped  them  all.  Every  one 
rushed  to  utterance,  and  Garrison  more  than 
all  men  put  together.  So  long  as  we  con 
sider  his  utterances  in  the  large,  as  part  of 
the  upturning  of  that  age,  as  the  sine  qua 
non  of  a  new  epoch,  we  love  and  value 
them.  It  is  only  when  we  collocate  them, 
analyze  them,  and  try  to  find  something  for 
our  own  souls  in  them,  that  they  turn  out 
to  be  emergency  cries.  They  were  de 
signed  towards  local  ends,  they  were  prac 
tical  politics,  they  do  not  always  cohere 
with  one  another. 

The  great  thesis  to  which  he  devoted  his 
life,  however,  was  unquestionably  sound. 
He  thus  announced  it  in  the  Liberator  in 
1832: 

"  There  is  much  declamation  about  the 
sacredness  of  the  compact  which  was 
formed  between  the  free  and  slave  States, 
on  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution.  A 
sacred  compact,  forsooth !  [  We  pronounce 
it  the  most  bloody  and  heaven-daring  ar 
rangement  ever  made  by  men  for  the  con 
tinuance  and  protection  of  a  system  of  the 
most  atrocious  villainy  ever  exhibited  upon 
the  earth'/]  Yes,  we  recognize  the  compact, 
but  with  feelings  of  shame  and  indignation; 
and  it  will  be  held  in  everlasting  infamy  by 
168 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

the  friends  of  justice  and  humanity 
throughout  the  world.  It  was  a  compact 
formed  at  the  sacrifice  of  the  bodies  and 
souls  of  millions  of  our  race,  for  the  sake 
of  achieving  a  political  object  —  an  un 
blushing  and  monstrous  coalition  to  do  evil 
that  good  might  come.  Such  a  compact 
was  in  the  nature  of  things,  and  according 
to  the  law  of  God,  null  and  void  from  the 
beginning.  No  body  of  men  ever  had  the 
right  to  guarantee  the  holding  of  human  be 
ings  in  bondage. 

"  Who  or  what  were  the  framers  of  our 
Government  that  they  should  dare  confirm 
and  authorize  such  high-handed  villainy  — 
such  a  flagrant  robbery  of  the  inalienable 
rights  of  man  —  such  a  glaring  violation  of 
all  the  precepts  and  injunctions  of  the  Gos 
pel  —  such  a  savage  war  upon  a  sixth  part 
of  our  whole  population?  They  were  men, 
like  ourselves  —  as  fallible,  as  sinful,  as 
weak,  as  ourselves.  By  the  infamous  bar 
gain  which  they  made  between  themselves, 
they  virtually  dethroned  the  Most  High 
God,  and  trampled  beneath  their  feet  their 
own  solemn  and  heaven-attested  Declara 
tion,  that  all  men  are  created  equal,  and  en 
dowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  in 
alienable  rights  —  among  which  are  life, 
169 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  They 
had  no  lawful  power  to  bind  themselves  or 
their  posterity  for  one  hour  —  for  one  mo 
ment  —  by  such  an  unholy  alliance.  It  was 
not  valid  then  —  it  is  not  valid  now.  Still 
they  persisted  in  maintaining  it  —  and  still 
do  their  successors,  the  people  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  of  New  England,  and  of 
the  twelve  free  States,  persist  in  maintain 
ing  it.  A  sacred  compact!  a  sacred 
compact!  What,  then,  is  wicked  and  igno 
minious? 

"  It  is  said  that  if  you  agitate  this  ques- 
tion  you  will  divide  the  Union.  Believe  it 
not;  but  should  disunion  follow,  the  fault 
will  not  be  yours.  You  must  perform  your 
duty,  faithfully,  fearlessly  and  promptly, 
and  leave  the  consequences  to  God:  that 
duty  clearly  is,  to  cease  from  giving  coun 
tenance  and  protection  to  Southern  kid 
nappers.  Let  them  separate,  if  they  can  mus 
ter  courage  enough  —  and  the  liberation  of 
their  slaves  is  certain.  .Be  ^assured  that 
slavery  will  very  speedily  destroy  this  Union 
ff~iT"5e7it  alone j  rjuTerenif  the  Union  can 
be  preserved  by  treading  upon  the  necks, 
spilling  the  blood,  and  destroying  the  souls 
of  millions  of  your  race,  we  say  it  is  not 
worth  a  price  like  this,  and  that  it  is  in  the 
170 


THE    MAN    OF   ACTION 

highest  degree  criminal  for  you  to  continue 
the  present  compact.  Let  the  pillars 
thereof  fall  —  let  the  superstructure  crum 
ble  into  dust  —  if  it  must  be  upheld  by  rob 
bery  and  oppression. " 

This  statement  of  Garrison's  is,  to  my 
mind,  the  best  thing  ever  said  about  slavery 
in  the  United  States.  There  is  no  exag 
geration  in  the  statement :  it  is  absolutely 
true.  It  is  a  complete  answer  to  the  Con 
stitutional  point;  and  makes  all  our  ante 
bellum  public  men  (including  Lincoln)  ap 
pear  a  little  benighted.  They  are  like  men 
who  have  been  born  in  a  darkness  and  have 
lived  always  in  a  twilight.  They  all  have 
a  slight,  congenital  weakness  of  the  eye, 
which  prevents  them  from  taking  the  day 
light  view  of  this  whole  matter. 

We  ourselves  to-day  are  so  habituated  to 
the  historic  obfuscation  of  our  ancestors 
that  we  make  allowance  for  it, —  more  al 
lowance,  indeed,  than  we  ought  to  make. 
We  have,  by  inheritance,  rather  weak  eyes 
on  this  subject  ourselves.  The  true  cause 
for  wonder  as  to  the  age  of  Abolition  is 
not  that  Garrison  was  right,  but  that  there 
should  have  been  only  one  person  in  Amer 
ica  with  a  clear  head.  Let  us  now  turn 
forward  over  ten  years  of  history, —  in- 
171 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

eluding  all  the  pictures  of  struggle  and  in 
cidents  referred  to  in  the  earlier  pages,  and 
let  us  read  Garrison's  most  famous  exposi 
tion  of  his  theme  uttered  in  1842: 

"  We  affirm  that  the  Union  is  not  of 
heaven.  It  is  founded  in  unrighteousness 
and  cemented  with  blood.  It  is  the  work 
of  men's  hands,  and  they  worship  the  idol 
which  they  have  made.  It  is  a  horrible 
mockery  of  freedom.  In  all  its  parts  and 
proportions  it  is  misshapen,  incongruous,  un 
natural.  The  message  of  the  prophet  to  the 
people  in  Jerusalem  describes  the  exact  char 
acter  of  our  '  republican  '  Compact :  '  Hear 
the  Word  of  the  Lord,  ye  scornful  men  that 
rule  this  people.  Because  ye  have  said,  We 
have  made  a  covenant  with  Death,  and  with 
Hell  are  we  at  agreement;  when  the  over 
flowing  scourge  shall  pass  through,  it  shall 
not  come  unto  us :  for  we  have  made  lies  our 
refuge,  and  under  falsehood  have  we  hid 
ourselves:  Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord 
God,  Judgment  will  I  lay  to  the  line,  and 
righteousness  to  the  plummet:  and  the  hail 
shall  sweep  away  the  refuge  of  lies,  and  the 
water  shall  overflow  the  hiding-place.  And 
your  covenant  with  Death  shall  be  annulled, 
and  your  agreement  with  Hell  shall  not 
stand;  when  the  overflowing  scourge  shall 
172 


THE    MAN    OF   ACTION 

pass  through  then  ye  shall  be  trodden  down 
by  it' 

"  Another  message  of  the  same  inspired 
prophet  is  equally  applicable :  '  Thus  saith 
the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  Because  ye  despised 
this  word,  and  trust  in  oppression  and  per- 
verseness,  and  stay  thereon :  Therefore,  this 
iniquity  shall  be  to  you  as  a  breach  ready  to 
fall,  swelling  out  in  a  high  wall,  whose 
breaking  cometh  suddenly,  AT  AN  INSTANT. 
And  he  shall  break  it  as  the  breaking  of  a 
potter's  vessel  that  is  broken  to  pieces;  he 
shall  not  spare:  so  that  there  shall  not  be 
found  in  the  bursting  of  it,  a  shred  to  take 
fire  from  the  hearth,  or  to  take  water  withal 
out  of  the  pit.' 

"  Slavery  is  a  combination  of  Death  and 
Hell,  and  with  it  the  North  have  made  a 
covenant  and  are  at  agreement.  As  an  ele 
ment  of  the  Government  it  is  omnipotent, 
omniscient,  omnipresent.  As  a  component 
part  of  the  Union  it  is  necessarily  a  national 
interest.  Divorced  from  Northern  protec 
tion  it  dies ;  with  that  protection,  it  enlarges 
its  boundaries,  multiplies  its  victims,  and 
extends  its  ravages." 

These  passages  are  too  direct  to  be  called 
extravagant.  They  are  appalling.  They 
are  magnificent.  And  they  came  much 
173 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

nearer  to  expressing  the  general  opinion  of 
the  country  in  1842  than  the  milder  words 
quoted  above  came  to  expressing  the  con 
temporary  opinion  of  1832.  Education  was 
marching,  the  case  was  beginning  to  be  un 
derstood.  Within  three  years  after  Garri 
son's  denunciation  of  the  Constitution  as  an 
agreement  with  Hell,  the  Annexation  of 
Texas  brought  thousands  of  the  most  con 
servative  minds  in  the  country,  including 
Channing,  to  the  point  of  abandoning  the 
Constitution;  and  when  in  1854  Garrison 
publicly  burned  the  Constitution  on  the 
Fourth  of  July,  the  incident  was  of  slight 
importance.  Civil  War  was  already  inevi 
table:  the  dragon's  teeth  had  been  sown: 
the  blades  of  bright  bayonets  could  be  seen 
pushing  up  through  the  soil  in  Kansas. 

We  see,  then,  the  profound  unity  of  Garri 
son's  whole  course,  and  may  examine  with 
indulgence  some  minor  failures  in  logic 
which  are  very  characteristic  of  him, —  very 
characteristic,  indeed,  of  all  practical-minded 
men  who,  after  making  one  fault  of  logic, 
proceed  to  joggle  themselves  back  again  to 
their  true  work  by  committing  a  second. 
It  is  apparent  that  a  man  who  assumes  Gar 
rison's  grounds  as  to  the  importance  of  the 
spirit,  and  the  unimportance  of  everything 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

else,  can  never  turn  aside  and  adopt  any 
institution,  without  doing  violence  to  his  own 
principles.  To  disparage  all  government 
because  it  is  "  the  letter  that  killeth,"  and 
thereafter  to  swear  fealty  to  some  party,  or 
adopt  a  symbol,  or  advise  a  friend  to  vote 
with  the  Whigs  is  inconsistent.  One  who 
believes  in  standing  for  absolute  principle 
can  never  indorse  some  political  scheme  on 
the  ground  that  "  this  time  it  doesn't  count." 
One  who  believes  it  wrong  to  meet  force 
with  force  cannot  retain  the  privilege  of  ap 
proving  some  particular  war  or  some  par 
ticular  act  of  self-defense,  which  seems  to 
him  to  be  useful.  Garrison  had  not  the 
mental  training  to  perceive  this,  and  to  do 
so  would  have  involved  his  retirement  from 
the  camp  to  the  closet:  it  would  have  in 
volved  his  being  someone  else.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  from  time  to  time  his  nature  drew 
a  veil  over  his  theories,  and  so  obscured 
them  that  he  was  able  to  support  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States,  to  rejoice  in 
bloodshed,  to  take  active  part  in  political 
contests, —  both  in  the  great  occasional  Na 
tional  elections  (as  when  he  came  out  for 
Lincoln  or  Fremont),  and  in  the  continuous 
petty  politics  of  the  Anti-slavery  cause. 
After  having  supported  one  of  these  hu- 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

man  institutions  with  zeal,  and  having  justi 
fied  his  conduct  with  facile  and  self-deceiv 
ing  casuistry,  he  would  again  ascend  the 
mountain,  the  veil  would  be  withdrawn  from 
his  intellect,  and  he  would  see  his  true  vision 
once  more  and  proclaim  it  with  renewed  fer 
vor:  the  vision,  namely,  that  no  institution 
should  be  held  sacred. 

Let  us  now  look  upon  Garrison's  dealings 
with  Anti-slavery  Societies,  newspapers, 
and  meetings  by  the  light  of  the  foregoing 
views.  When  a  new  religious  movement 
begins  to  stir  in  a  community,  its  members 
are  drawn  together  through  the  spiritual 
likeness  of  one  to  the  other.  They  are  few : 
they  are  held  together  by  persecution :  they 
have  all  things  in  common.  They  need  no 
creed ;  they  all  feel  as  one.  This  stage  can 
not  endure;  for  someone  arises  who  wishes 
to  hold  office.  The  Apostles  began  quarrel 
ing  as  to  who  should  be  greatest  even  during 
Christ's  lifetime.  As  soon  as  any  organiza 
tion  is  formed,  there  arise  differences  of 
opinion,  and  the  era  of  politics  is  reached. 
With  our  modern  ideas  of  club  organization 
for  everything,  a  political  element  enters  into 
any  cause  whenever  two  or  three  are  gath 
ered  together  in  it.  It  ought  to  be  a  les 
son  to  us  to  observe  how  completely  all  men, 
176 


THE   MAN    OF   ACTION 

even  great  men,  are  the  children  of  their 
age.  Garrison  took  up  the  propagation  of 
the  Anti-slavery  cause  by  means  of  Demo 
cratic  Societies, —  a  means  which  ties  up  any 
cause  into  little  tight  knots  as  it  goes  along, 
much  as  certain  forms  of  crochet  work  prog 
ress  by  adding  little  groups  of  hard  knots  to 
other  groups  of  hard  knots.  The  machinery 
of  his  movement  made  vigilance  essential. 
He  might  be  outvoted,  his  newspaper  might 
be  taken  from  him,  his  control  might  be  de 
stroyed  at  any  juncture.  He  is  obliged,  at 
intervals,  to  throw  himself  into  the  intrigue 
of  Anti-slavery  government,  with  the  words 
of  Moses  on  his  lips  and  some  vote-getting, 
hall-packing  device  in  his  mind.  This  was 
not  true  of  the  earliest  years  of  the  move 
ment;  but  came  about  through  the  mighty 
logic  of  natural  law  as  the  movement  spread. 
Persecution  purifies  any  new  religion.  As 
the  wave  of  persecution  which  had  held  the 
Abolitionists  together  from  1830  to  1837 
began  to  subside,  quarrels  broke  out.  It  was 
not  until  1850  when  the  triumph  of  the 
Slave  Power  in  the  passage  of  the  Compro 
mise  Bill,  gave  rise  to  a  new  and  short  perse 
cution,  that  the  Anti-slavery  people  enjoyed 
again  a  short  period  of  unity  and  peace. 
The  inevitable  quarrels  over  creed  and 
177 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

dogma  set  in  in  1839.  Anti-slavery  de 
veloped  a  complex  and  bitter  political  ac 
tivity.  This  is  the  epoch  of  mutual  pro 
scriptions.  The  purity  of  the  faith  is  ever 
at  stake,  New  Organization  is  branded  by 
Old  Organization  "  as  the  worst  form  of  pro- 
slavery."  The  Tocsin  of  Liberty  main 
tained  :  "  The  simple  truth  is,  the  American 
A.  S.  Society  has  linked  itself  to  pro-slavery, 
to  get  friends  —  and,  like  the  Colonization 
Society,  it  has  become  an  obstacle  to  prog 
ress  which  must  be  removed."  Mr.  Garri 
son  reported  from  the  business  committee, 
"  that  we  cannot  regard  any  man  as  a  con 
sistent  Abolitionist  who,  while  holding  to 
the  popular  construction  of  the  Constitution, 
makes  himself  a  party  to  that  instrument,  by 
taking  any  office  under  it  requiring  an  oath, 
or  voting  for  its  support." 

We  can  see  to-day  that  it  was  througlfi 
these  very  struggles  that  the  new  thought 
was  penetrating  the  community.  It  is  at 
first  through  the  multiplication  of  new  agen 
cies,  and  later  through  an  attack  upon  ex 
isting  agencies,  and  an  absorption  into  the 
older  organs  of  society,  that  new  thought 
always  sinks  and  spreads,  touching  and 
changing  society  both  visibly  and  invisibly. 
TKTsT~process  is  inevitable,  but  Garrison 
178 


THE   MAN    OF   ACTION 

quarreled  with  it.  He  was  ever  wanting  to 
keep  the  faith  pure.  He  saw  that  no  one  else 
cared  so  much  about  the  subject  as  he  him 
self  did;  and  he  thought  that  he  must  keep 
the  precious  ichor  from  pollution.  As  late 
as  1857,  he  moaned  that  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  split  in  the  Anti-slavery  ranks  in 
1840,  slavery  might  have  been  abolished  be 
fore  then.  It  was  not  given  to  him  to  see 
that  he  could  have  kept  himself  and  all  his 
following  clear  of  all  entanglements,  and 
could  have  exerted  the  maximum  of  influ 
ence  with  the  minimum  of  effort,  if  he  had 
simply  formed  no  organization,  but  had 
merely  taken  in  subscriptions  for  the  cause, 
in  his  own  name,  and  to  do  with  as  he 
pleased.  His  organization  and  his  Liberator 
were  in  any  case,  and  always,  mere  personal 
organs  of  his  own :  they  followed  his  mental 
vagaries,  they  stuck  to  him,  they  were  him 
self;  and  this  same  result  could  have  been 
accomplished  with  infinite  heart's  ease  in 
stead  of  infinite  heart's  anguish,  had  Garri 
son  but  seen  how  to  do  it.  In  adopting  a 
formal  organization  he  was  adopting  part 
of  the  very  element  that  his  thought  re 
jected  :  he  was  fighting  the  cause  of  no- 
government  by  means  of  a  "machine;"  he 
was  supporting  the  spirit  by  votes. 
179 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

Hence  Garrison's  share  in  all  the  weari 
some,  little,  and  at  times,  degraded  bicker 
ing  between  Anti-slavery  Societies;  hence 
much  personal  vilification  and  heated  talk 
over  trifles.  We  see  here  also  that  these  de 
fects  in  Garrison  proceed  from  a  want  of 
philosophic  continuity  of  thought.  Philo 
sophic  insight  he  had,  but  philosophic  conti 
nuity  he  had  not.  There  came  a  time  in  the 
forties  when  he  seems  to  have  half -perceived 
the  nature  of  his  own  mission, — -to  have 
half-seen,  at  least  for  a  moment,  that  there 
were  to  be  no  simon-pure  Abolitionists  ex 
cept  himself,  and  that  his  function  was  to  in 
fluence  the  world  from  where  he  stood. 
This  insight  was  probably  the  result  of 
watching  the  same  phenomena  occur  again 
and  again,  of  seeing  his  Cause  move  con 
stantly  forward  through  an  infinite  series  of 
failures :  "  As  fast  as  we,  the  Old  Organi 
zation,  make  Abolitionists,  the  new  converts 
run  right  into  the  Liberty  Party,  and  become 
almost  wholly  hostile  to  us.  This  results 
from  the  strong  leaning  of  our  National 
character  to  politics.  ...  It  is  dis 
heartening  to  see  that  every  blow  we  strike 
thus  tells  in  a  degree  against  ourselves,  and 
yet  duty  bids  us  keep  on  striking."  It  is 
Wendell  Phillips  who  in  this  passage  is  ac- 
180 


THE   MAN    OF    ACTION 

curately  describing  the  operation  of  a  great 
law  of  influence,  and  who  yet  seems  to  see 
in  it  merely  evidence  of  human  perversity. 
Later  on,  and  especially  during  the  war,  Gar 
rison  became  reconciled  to  that  law,  which 
his  own  life  had  ever  blindly  obeyed  and  ex 
emplified. 

I  must  now  speak  of  the  matter  of  strong 
language.  The  prophet,  great  or  small,  is 
not  so  much  an  individual,  as  a  part  of  the 
consciousness  of  all  men.  He  acts  in  a  par 
ticular  way  upon  the  force  of  life,  just  as  a 
prism  acts  in  a  particular  way  upon  light. 
He  is  formed  by  pressure  of  some  sort,  and 
appears  at  critical  times,  just  as  a  prism  is 
created  by  pressure  in  the  womb  of  the 
mountain.  His  understanding  of  his  own 
function  is  uncertain,  and  there  have  been 
many  plain-minded  prophets  who  could  suf 
fer  martyrdom,  but  not  explain.  I  cannot 
find  that  even  Socrates  exactly  understood 
the  theory  of  agitation.  The  world  some 
times  thinks  of  these  men  as  stupid  people 
who  know  not  what  they  would  be  at.  We 
should  think  of  them  as  spirits  who  enact 
a  lesson  rather  than  as  moralists  who  read 
a  lecture.  Let  every  man  carry  home  what 
he  can  from  the  auto-da-fe.  The  prophets 
are  hot  volcanic  lava,  rolling  out  of  some 
181 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

hidden  furnace, —  which  is  really  a  distribu 
tive  furnace,  and  overflows  to  a  lesser  de 
gree  in  other  men. 

The  aerolites  which  fall  in  Terra  del  Fuego 
show  much  the  same  chemical  nature  as 
those  of  Iceland.  So  of  these  accusing, 
flaming  aerolites  of  politics.  The  Jewish 
prophet  is  the  most  soft-hearted  of  them  all, 
and  it  is  to  this  variety  that  Garrison  be 
longs.  These  men  see  the  suffering  of  the 
world,  and  they  see  or  feel  the  relation  be 
tween  the  suffering  of  one  man  and  the 
selfishness  of  the  next.  The  greatest  of 
them  all  speaks  thus : 

"  For  they  bind  heavy  burdens  and  griev 
ous  to  be  borne,  and  lay  them  on  men's 
shoulders ;  but  they  themselves  will  not  move 
them  with  one  of  their  fingers.  But  all 
their  works  they  do  for  to  be  seen  of  men: 
they  make  broad  their  phylacteries,  and  en 
large  the  borders  of  their  garments,  and 
love  the  uppermost  rooms  at  feasts,  and  the 
chief  seats  in  the  synagogues,  and  greetings 
in  the  markets,  and  to  be  called  of  men, 
Rabbi,  Rabbi. 

"  But  woe  unto  you,  Scribes  and  Phari 
sees,  hypocrites !  for  ye  shut  up  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  against  men:  for  ye 
neither  go  in  yourselves,  neither  suffer  ye 
182 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

them  that  are  entering  to  go  in.  Woe  unto 
ye  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  hyprocrites!  for 
ye  devour  widows'  houses,  and  for  a  pre 
tence  make  long  prayers :  therefore  ye  shall 
receive  the  greater  damnation.  Woe  unto 
you,  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites!  for 
ye  compass  sea  and  land  to  make  one  prose 
lyte;  and  when  he  is  made,  ye  make  him 
twofold  more  the  child  of  hell  than  your 
selves.  Woe  unto  you,  ye  blind  guides, 
which  say,  Whosoever  shall  swear  by  the 
temple,  it  is  nothing;  but  whosoever  shall 
shall  swear  by  the  gold  of  the  temple  he  is  a 
debtor ! 

"  Ye  fools  and  blind :  for  whether  is 
greater,  the  gold,  or  the  temple  that  sancti- 
fieth  the  gold?  Woe  unto  ye  scribes  and 
Pharsiees,  hypocrites!  for  ye  pay  tithe  of 
mint,  and  anise,  and  cummin,  and  have 
omitted  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law, 
judgment,  mercy,  and  faith:  these  ought  ye 
to  have  done  and  not  leave  the  other  undone. 
Woe  unto  ye  scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypo 
crites!  because  ye  build  the  tombs  of  the 
prophets,  and  garnish  the  sepulchers  of  the 
righteous,  and  say,  If  we  had  been  in  the 
days  of  our  fathers,  we  would  not  have  been 
partakers  with  them  in  the  blood  of  the 
prophets.  Wherefore  ye  be  witnesses  unto 
183 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

yourselves,  that  ye  are  the  children  of  them 
which  killed  the  prophets.  Fill  ye  up  then 
the  measure  of  your  fathers. 

"  Ye  serpents,  ye  generation  of  vipers, 
how  can  ye  escape  the  damnation  of  hell? 
Wherefore,  behold,  I  send  unto  you  proph 
ets,  and  wise  men,  and  scribes:  and  some 
of  them  ye  shall  kill  and  crucify,  and 
some  of  them  ye  shall  scourge  in  your  syna 
gogues,  and  persecute  them  from  city  to 
city:  that  upon  you  may  come  all  the 
righteous  blood  shed  upon  the  earth,  from 
the  blood  of  righteous  Abel  unto  the  blood  of 
Zacharias,  son  of  Barachias,  whom  ye  slew 
between  the  temple  and  the  altar.  Verily 
I  say  unto  you,  all  these  things  shall  come 
upon  this  generation.  O  Jerusalem,  Jeru 
salem,  thou  that  killest  the  prophets,  and 
stonest  them  which  are  sent  unto  thee,  how 
often  would  I  have  gathered  thy  children 
together,  even  as  a  hen  gathereth  her  chick 
ens  under  her  wings,  and  ye  would  not! 
Behold  your  house  is  left  unto  you  desolate. 
For  I  say  unto  you,  Ye  shall  not  see  me 
henceforth,  till  ye  shall  say,  Blessed  is  he 
that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord." 

The  tone  of  these  denunciations  is  not  an 
accidental  characteristic  of  Christ's.  It  is 
an  organic  product,  a  concomitant  of  the 
184 


THE   MAN    OF    ACTION 

hottest,  most  personal  love  of  men  that  has 
ever  been  known  upon  the  earth.  Here 
then  is  an  outpouring  of  lava.  Vainly 
might  we  call  this  passion,  idle,  unphilo- 
sophical,  lacking  in  courtesy;  or  say  that  it 
fails  to  distinguish  between  the  sinner  and 
the  sin.  Granted :  granted.  Yet  this  is  the 
way  a  man  speaks  who  feels  as  Christ  felt. 
If  Christ's  way  of  feeling  be  right,  there  is 
something  right  about  his  mode  of  expres 
sion.  Somewhere,  somehow,  this  heat  is 
valuable.  In  some  sense  these  whirling 
words  are  true,  just,  adequate  and  scientific. 
They  do  something  which  nothing  else  will 
do.  You  say  there  is  evil  in  them.  You 
are  mistaken :  there  is  no  evil  in  them :  there 
is  nothing  uncharitable  in  them.  They  are 
the  terrible  music  of  social  agony.  You 
would  speak  thus  yourself,  could  you  see  as 
clearly,  feel  as  keenly,  as  did  Christ.  Your 
calmness  is  only  possible  because  your  heart 
is  cold,  or  your  eyes  dim. 

Let  us  now  remember  what  mild  gentle 
men  those  Pharisees  were,  to  whom  Christ 
used  such  strong  language.  How  inoffen 
sive  their  vices, —  a  little  usury,  some  busi 
ness  villainy,  perhaps,  a  good  deal  of  con 
ventional  hypocrisy,  front  pews  in  church, 
public  charity-giving.  That  old  Jewish  so- 
185 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

ciety  was  probably  the  most  moral  society 
that  ever  existed.  If  we  consider  its  thou 
sand  years  of  prophets,  its  literature  of  ethics 
and  of  devotion,  its  popular  passion  for  the 
ology,  its  passion  for  those  discussions  which 
went  on  constantly  in  temple  and  market 
place,  and  which  show  a  deeper  clutch  upon 
truth  than  Athens  at  her  best  could  show, 
—  if  we  consider  what  sort  of  men 
those  Scribes  and  Pharisees  probably  were, 
we  shall  have  to  confess  that  Christ's  rebuke 
fell  on  men  whose  faults  were  mild  com 
pared  to  the  atrocities  visible  in  the  modern 
world.  Examine  the  morning  newspaper 
and  you  will  find  fiendish  cruelties  unknown 
in  Judea. 

At  the  back  of  the  prophet's  emotion  is 
his  vision  of  a  relation  between  innocent  suf 
fering  and  half-innocent  selfishness.  If  you 
should  see  a  man  being  burned  alive  by  re 
spectable  rate-payers,  you  would  cry  out, 
you, —  yet  not  you  but  something  in  you, — 
would  burst  into  agonized  protest,  accusing 
those  rate-payers ;  and  your  language  would 
be  harsh.  Such  is  the  explanation  of  the 
strong  language  of  Anti-slavery.  The  Ab 
olitionists  were  the  only  people  in  the  coun 
try  who  effectually  saw  what  was  going  on. 
They  saw  the  slave-block,  they  saw  the  child 
186 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

reft  from  the  mother,  they  saw  the  floggings 
and  the  despair.  A  hundred  volumes  might 
be  compiled  out  of  old  newspapers  by  cull 
ing  advertisements  like  the  following  from 
the  Charleston  Courier  in  1825: 

"  Twenty  dollars  reward, — >  ran  away 
from  the  subscriber,  on  the  I4th  instant,  a 
negro  girl  named  Molly.  She  is  16  or  17 
years  of  age,  slim  made,  lately  branded  on 
her  left  cheek,  thus,  '  R/  and  a  piece  is  taken 
off  her  left  ear  on  the  same  side;  the  same 
letter  is  branded  on  the  inside  of  both  her 

legs'  "  ABNER  Ross, 

"  Fairfield  District,  S.  C." 
Let  any  serious-minded  man  read  a  few 
pages  of  the  Key  to  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 
or  of  Theodore  D.  Weld's  book  on  American 
Slavery,  before  he  decides  to  discountenance 
strong  language.  The  people  of  the  South 
did  not  know  about  the  horrors  of  slavery, 
and  taught  their  children  not  to  see  them; 
they  glossed  them  over,  as  the  inevitable  un 
pleasantnesses  of  life  are  always  glossed 
over.  John  S.  Wise  was  a  typical  child  of 
the  South,  save  that  he  had  a  Northern 
mother.  He  was  the  son  of  Henry  A. 
Wise,  the  famous  Governor  of  Virginia,  and 
he  has  given  us  a  book  of  memoirs,  "  The 
187 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

End  of  An  Era,"  which  will  be  read  as  long 
as  the  Civil  War  is  remembered.  John  S. 
Wise  had  never  heard  of  a  slave-auction,  till 
a  Northern  uncle,  whom  he  met  or  visited  in 
Philadelphia,  took  him  to  see  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  "  on  the  stage.  This  was  in  the  fif 
ties,  and  when  John  S.  Wise  was  a  young 
lad.  On  returning  to  Richmond  he  visited 
a  slave-auction,  and  was  as  much  horrified 
as  a  Northern  boy  would  have  been.  The 
horrors  of  slavery  were  unknown  to  the 
South,  and  ten  times  more  unknown  to  the 
North,  when  the  Abolitionists  discovered 
them. 

I  have  noticed  in  recent  years  one  or  two 
denunciations  of  business  wickedness,  in 
which  a  fierce  invective  seemed  to  tear  the 
skin  from  the  victim's  body.  One  writer 
pictured  the  descent  of  disease  upon  the  bad 
man, —  how  his  hair  fell  from  his  scalp. 
Now  in  all  these  cases, —  in  the  case  of 
Christ,  of  the  Abolitionists,  and  of  the  de 
nouncers  of  business  wickedness, —  the  deli 
cate  mind  is  shocked.  It  is  shocked  because 
it  reads  in  cold  blood  what  is  merely  the  in 
stinctive  expression  of  hot  feeling.  It  sees 
malice  where  there  is  no  malice  The 
truth  is  that  instinctive  expression  does 
something  which  philosophic  analysis  can- 
188 


THE    MAN    OF   ACTION 

not  do :  it  reaches  the  soul,  it  raises  the  tem 
perature  and  lets  in  light.  The  danger  of 
denunciation  lies  in  the  temptation  to  use 
denunciation  as  a  method  of  reform.  The 
spontaneous  cry  of  pity  ought  never  to  be 
transformed  into  a  lash;  nor  should  the 
flames  of  righteous  indignation  be  ex 
ploited  politically,  and  used  to  cook  up  re 
form.  There  is  nothing  of  this  kind  in  the 
New  Testament,  but  there  was  a  good  deal 
of  it  in  Anti-slavery  history.  Garrison 
made  a  method  of  personal  vilification ;  he 
would  cover  the  wicked  with  "  thick  in 
famy."  He  was  a  gadfly  and  a  fury  in  his 
own  conception.  His  utterances  are  not  al 
ways,  like  Christ's,  lyrical  utterances;  they 
are  calculated  attacks.  This  is  hardly  a 
matter,  however,  upon  which  one  can  make 
a  general  statement  that  will  cover  all  cases. 
The  particular  thing  uttered  by  Garrison 
must,  in  each  case,  be  considered  by  itself. 
There  are  moments  when  Garrison  is  in 
spired.  His  faith  is  perfect.  In  reviewing 
the  first  year  of  the  Liberator's  activity,  he 
wrote :  "  Last  year  I  felt  as  if  I  were  fight 
ing  single-handed  against  the  great  enemy; 
now  I  see  around  me  a  host  of  valiant  war 
riors,  armed  with  weapons  of  an  immortal 
temper,  whom  nothing  can  daunt,  and  who 
189 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

are  pledged  to  the  end  of  the  contest.  The 
number  is  increasing  with  singular  rapidity. 
The  standard  which  has  been  lifted  up  in 
Boston  is  attracting  the  gaze  of  the  nation, 
and  inspiring  the  drooping  hearts  of  thou 
sands  with  hope  and  courage. 

"  As  for  myself,  whatever  may  be  my  fate 

—  whether  I  fall  in  the  spring-time  of  man 
hood  by  the  hand  of  the  assassin,  or  be  im 
mured  in  a  Georgia  cell,  or  be  permitted  to 
live  to  a  ripe  old  age  —  I  know  that  the  suc 
cess  of  your  cause  depends  nothing  upon  my 
existence.     I  am  but  as  a  drop  in  the  ocean, 
which,  if  it  be  separated,  cannot  be  missed. 
My  own  faith  is  strong  —  my  vision,  clear 

—  my  consolation,  great.     '  Who  art  thou 

0  great    mountain?     Before     Zerubbabel 
thou  shalt  become  a  plain :  and  he  shall  bring 
the  headstone  thereof  with  shoutings,  cry 
ing,  Grace,  grace  unto  it ! '        Surely  this  is 
beautiful :  it  is  inspired ;  it  is  unconscious. 

The  following  description  of  the  Coloniza 
tion  Society  seems  to  me  to  be  truly  Hebraic 
in  its  celestial  rage, —  "  Upon  this  pamphlet 

1  shall  be  willing  to  stake  my  reputation  for 
honesty,  prudence,  benevolence,  truth,  and 
sagaciousness.     If  I  do  not  prove  the  Colo 
nization  spirit  to  be  a  creature  without  heart, 
without  brains,  eyeless,  unnatural,  hypocriti- 

190 


THE   MAN   OF   ACTION 

cal,  relentless,  unjust,  then  nothing  is  capable 
of  demonstration."  The  reader  may  turn 
over  Garrison's  utterances  and  pick  out  the 
lyrical  from  the  political  by  the  light  of  his 
own  feeling.  In  doing  so  he  will  find  him 
self  forgiving  more,  the  more  he  becomes  ac 
quainted  with  Garrison's  world.  The  fol 
lowing  words  about  Henry  Clay  seem  cruel : 
"  Henry  Clay  —  with  one  foot  in  the  grave, 
and  just  ready  to  have  body  and  soul  cast 
into  Hell  —  as  if  eager  to  make  his  damna 
tion  doubly  sure,  rises  in  the  United  States 
Senate  and  proposes  an  inquiry  into  the  ex 
pediency  of  passing  yet  another  law,  by 
which  every  one  who  shall  dare  peep  or  mut 
ter  against  the  execution  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law  shall  have  his  life  crushed  out." 

When  we  learn,  however,  that  the  Fugi 
tive  Slave  Law  of  1850  provided  that  the 
negro  in  Massachusetts  might  be  identified 
through  the  mere  affidavit  of  the  slave 
holder  agent;  that  the  slave  could  not  testify 
himself;  that  there  was  no  trial  by  jury; 
that  the  commissioner's  fee  was  doubled  if 
the  slaveholder  prevailed ;  that  the  bystander 
could  be  summoned  to  aid  in  preventing  an 
escape,  and  that,  in  case  any  person  assisted 
the  escape,  such  person  should  be  fined  a 
thousand  dollars,  or  imprisoned  not  exceed- 
191 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

ing  six  months ;  when  we  learn  that  modern 
historians  have  accounted  for  its  diabolical 
provisions  by  suggesting  that  this  Fugitive 
Slave  Bill  was  intended  to  involve  such  hu 
miliation  to  the  North  that  the  North  would 
not  swallow  it,  but  would  reject  it  and 
thereby  give  the  South  grounds  for  seces 
sion;  when  we  reflect  that  the  North  did 
swallow  this  law,  and  that  thousands  of 
free  colored  people  throughout  the  Northern 
cities,  innocent  and  industrious  citizens, 
were  at  that  time  fleeing  to  Canada ;  —  when 
we  remember  these  facts,  we  begin  to  feel 
that  Garrison's  language  was  by  no  means 
too  strong. 

When  all  has  been  said  in  his  favor,  there 
remains  a  certain  debauchery  of  language  in 
Garrison,  which  came  from  his  occupation: 
he  was  a  journalist.  If  a  man  writes  all  the 
time,  his  mannerisms  become  intensified. 
Garrison  became  a  common  scold, —  and  yet 
not  a  common  scold,  because  his  inner 
temper  was  perfect,  and  his  subject  the  great 
subject  of  the  age.  He  is  ever  driving  his 
Cause,  and  feels  he  must  evoke  immediate 
response  at  every  instant.  His  lack  of  good 
taste  is  not  unconnected  with  his  weakness 
in  abstract  thinking.  To  him  Slavery  in 
the  concrete  was  the  evil.  He  had  not  the 
192 


THE    MAN    OF   ACTION 

philosophic  power  to  perceive  that  sin  was 
the  real  evil.  The  evils  were  injustice, 
cruelty,  murder,  lust,  egoism.  These  things 
he  believed  to  be  the  outcome  of  Slavery. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  harshness  of  lan 
guage  that  we  are  quarreling  with.  What 
displeases  us  in  Garrison  is  the  element  of 
policy,  the  wholesale  element  in  his  method. 
But  let  us  beware  lest  in  straining  at  a  gnat 
we  swallow  a  camel;  and  let  us  remember 
that  what  is  offensive  to  us,  physicked  the 
nation.  The  young  Garrison,  the  man  of 
twenty-four,  when  he  discovered  Immediate 
Emancipation,  was  the  vortex  of  an  unseen 
whirlpool.  Through  his  brain  spun  the  tur- 
billion.  Something  was  to  break  forth;  for 
the  power  was  bursting  its  envelope.  The 
flood  issued  in  the  form  in  which  we  know 
it, —  with  purposed  vilification,  with  exco 
riating  harshness,  with  calculated  ferocity. 
Only  in  this  manner  could  it  issue :  the  dam 
could  hold  the  flood  no  longer,  nor  lift  it 
into  poetic  expression. 

If  you  take  the  great  political  agitators  of 
the  world  like  Luther,  Calvin,  Savonarola, 
Garibaldi,  or  certain  of  the  English  church 
reformers,  you  will  find  that  these  men  al 
ways  live  under  a  terrible  strain,  and  they 
generally  give  way  somewhere.  No  one  can 
193 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

imagine  how  fierce  is  the  blast  upon  a  man's 
nervous  system,  when  he  stands  in  the  midst 
of  universal  antagonism,  solitary  and  at 
bay.  The  continuousness  of  the  trial  is  apt 
to  wear  upon  the  character  of  reformers. 
Through  vanity,  or  love  of  power,  or 
through  sheer  nervous  exhaustion,  they  be 
come  guilty  of  cruelty  or  tainted  with  ambi 
tion.  There  is  generally  something  to  for 
give  in  the  history  of  such  men.  Now  Gar 
rison  is  almost  perfect:  he  is  perfect  in  his 
lack  of  personal  ambition,  in  his  indifference 
to  power,  in  his  courage,  his  faith,  his  per 
sistence,  his  benevolence.  When  he  breaks 
down  it  is  in  driblets,  and  every  day, —  in 
the  bad  taste  and  self-indulgence  of  a  dis 
gusting  rhetoric,  in  his  inability  to  "  shut 
up  "  about  anything,  in  his  use  of  the  per 
sonal  pronoun.  Through  these  channels  his 
nervous  exhaustion  is  worked  off,  and  the 
inner  heart  of  the  creature  is  left  free  from 
the  great  temptations. 

All  this  armor  of  language  was  the  para 
phernalia  of  the  arena,  which  was,  as  it 
were,  handed  to  Garrison  from  without, — 
from  on  high,  from  within.  He  puts  it  on, 
and  enters  the  lists :  he  puts  it  off,  and  takes 
supper  with  his  family.  As  for  the  kind  of 
man  which  he  really  was,  the  testimony  is 
194 


THE   MAN    OF   ACTION 

universal  and  uniform.  I  copy  one  or  two 
phrases  almost  at  random,  from  among  the 
innumerable  descriptions  of  him.  Richard 
D.  Webb,  an  Irish  Abolitionist,  and  a  very 
old  friend  of  all  the  Anti-slavery  people, 
wrote:  "I  .  .  .  spent  three  weeks  with 
the  Garrisons  in  Paris  and  Switzerland.  It 
was  a  time  of  intense  enjoyment,  for  I  ex 
ceedingly  liked  my  companions.  .  .  . 
As  to  Mr.  Garrison  himself,  he  is  the  most 
delightful  man  I  have  ever  known  —  mag 
nanimous,  generous,  considerate,  and,  as  far 
as  I  can  see,  every  way  morally  excellent. 
I  can  perceive  that  he  has  large  faith,  is  very 
credulous,  is  not  deeply  read,  and  has  little 
of  the  curiosity  or  thirst  for  knowledge 
which  educated  people  are  prone  to.  But, 
take  him  for  all  in  all,  I  know  no  such  other 
man.  His  children  are  most  affectionate 
and  free  with  him  —  yet  they  have  their  own 
opinions  and  express  them  freely,  even  when 
they  differ  most  widely  from  his.  .  .  . 
People  who  travel  together  have  an  excellent 
opportunity  of  knowing  and  testing  one  an 
other.  ...  I  have  never  on  the  whole 
known  a  man  who  bears  to  be  more  thor 
oughly  known,  or  is  so  sure  to  be  loved  and 
reverenced." 

Harriet  Martineau  has  left  us  a  record  of 
195 


WILLIAM    LLOYD   GARRISON 

her  first  impressions  in  all  their  freshness  :— 
"  At  ten  o'clock  he  came,  accompanied  by 
his  introducer.  His  aspect  put  to  flight  in 
an  instant  what  prejudices  his  slanderers  had 
raised  in  me.  I  was  wholly  taken  by  sur 
prise.  It  was  a  countenance  glowing  with 
health,  and  wholly  expressive  of  purity,  ani 
mation,  and  gentleness.  I  did  not  wonder 
at  the  citizen  who,  seeing  a  print  of  Garrison 
at  a  shop  window  without  a  name  to  it,  went 
in  and  bought  it,  and  framed  it  as  the  most 
saintlike  of  countenances.  The  end  of  the 
story  is,  that  when  the  citizen  found  whose 
portrait  he  had  been  hanging  up  in  his  par 
lor,  he  took  the  print  out  of  the  frame  and 
huddled  it  away/' 

The  lion  and  the  lamb  dwelt  together  in 
Garrison ;  but  the  lion  was  a  peculiar  lion,  he 
was  never  really  in  control  of  Garrison,  as 
the  lion  in  Luther  was  sometimes  in  control 
of  Luther.  The  following  anecdote  from 
Mr.  May's  reminiscences  gives  us  a  glimpse 
of  the  social  side  of  Garrison  and  shows  the 
perplexities  into  which  his  methods  of  agita 
tion  naturally  led  the  public.  The  scene  is 
upon  a  steamboat. 

"  There  was  much  earnest  talking  by  other 
parties  beside  our  own.     Presently  a  gentle 
man  turned  from  one  of  them  to  me  and 
196 


THE   MAN    OF    ACTION 

said,  *  What,  sir,  are  the  Abolitionists  going 
to  do  in  Philadelphia?'  I  informed  him 
that  we  intended  to  form  a  National  Anti- 
slavery  Society.  This  brought  from  him  an 
outpouring  of  the  commonplace  objections 
to  our  enterprise,  which  I  replied  to  as  well 
as  I  was  able.  Mr.  Garrison  drew  near,  and 
I  soon  shifted  my  part  of  the  discussion  into 
his  hands,  and  listened  with  delight  to  the 
admirable  manner  in  which  he  expounded 
and  maintained  the  doctrines  and  purposes 
of  those  who  believed  with  him  that  the 
slaves  —  the  blackest  of  them  —  were  men, 
entitled  as  much  as  the  whitest  and  most 
exalted  men  in  the  land  to  their  liberty,  to  a 
residence  here,  if  they  chose,  and  to  acquire 
as  much  wisdom,  as  much  property,  and  as 
high  a  position  as  they  may. 

"  After  a  long  conversation,  which  at 
tracted  as  many  as  could  get  within  hearing, 
the  gentleman  said,  courteously :  *  I  have 
been  much  interested,  sir,  in  what  you  have 
said,  and  in  the  exceedingly  frank  and  tem 
perate  manner  in  which  you  have  treated  the 
subject.  If  all  Abolitionists  were  like  you, 
there  would  be  much  less  opposition  to  your 
enterprise.  But,  sir,  depend  upon  it,  that 
hair-brained,  reckless,  violent  fanatic,  Gar 
rison  will  damage,  if  he  does  not  shipwreck, 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

any  cause.'  Stepping  forward,  I  replied, 
'  Allow  me,  sir,  to  introduce  you  to  Mr.  Gar 
rison,  of  whom  you  entertain  so  bad  an  opin 
ion.  The  gentleman  you  have  been  talking 
with  is  he/  ' 

The  gayety  of  temperament  and  a  certain 
bubbling  power  of  enjoyment  which  Garri 
son  possessed  he  shared  with  all,  or  almost 
all,  the  Abolitionists ;  their  work  made  them 
happy.  "  I  have  seen  him  intimately,"  said 
Wendell  Phillips,  "  for  thirty  years,  while 
raining  on  his  head  was  the  hate  of  the  com 
munity,  when  by  every  possible  form  of  ex 
pression  malignity  let  him  know  that  it 
wished  him  all  sorts  of  harm.  I  never  saw 
him  unhappy.  I  never  saw  the  moment  that 
serene  abounding  faith  in  the  rectitude  of  his 
motive,  the  soundness  of  his  method,  and 
the  certainty  of  success  did  not  lift  him 
above  all  possibility  of  being  reached  by 
any  clamor  about  him." 


198 


VIII 
THE    RYNDERS    MOB 

THE  Anti-slavery  meeting  at  the  Broadway 
Tabernacle  on  May  7,  1851,  whieh  goes  by 
the  name  of  the  Rynders  Mob,  has  an  inter 
est  quite  beyond  the  boundaries  of  its  epoch. 
It  gives  an  example  of  how  any  disturbance 
that  arises  in  a  public  meeting  ought  to  be 
handled  by  the  managers  of  the  meeting. 
It  has  a  lesson  for  all  agitators  and  popular 
speakers.  It  gives,  indeed,  a  picture  of 
humanity  during  a  turbulent  crisis,  a  pic 
ture  that  is  Athenian,  Roman,  Mediaeval, 
modern, —  a  scene  of  democratic  life,  flung 
to  us  from  the  ages.  I  shall  copy  the  ac 
count  of  this  meeting  almost  verbatim  from 
the  large  Life  of  Garrison.  No  comment 
can  add  to  the  power  of  it. 

We  have  to  remember  that  Webster  had 
made  his  famous  Compromise  speech  just 
two  months  before  this  meeting;  and  that 
the  phalanxes  of  all  conservative  people, 
from  George  Ticknor,  in  Boston,  to  the  row 
dies  on  the  Bowery  in  New  York,  were  be- 
199 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

ing  marshalled  to  repress  Abolition  as  they 
had  not  been  marshalled  since  1835.  It 
must  be  noted  also  that  this  attempt  suc 
ceeded  on  the  whole.  In  spite  of  the  tri 
umph  which  the  Abolitionists  scored  at  this 
particular  meeting,  it  became  impossible  for 
them  to  hold  meetings  in  great  cities  for 
some  time  afterwards.  The  complicity  of 
the  Churches  with  Slavery  is  now  almost 
forgotten.  Among  the  Abolitionists  dur 
ing  the  critical  epoch  there  was  to 
be  found  no  Episcopal  clergyman  (save 
the  Rev.  E.  P.  Wells,  of  Boston,  who  early 
withdrew  from  the  Cause)  and  no  Catholic 
priest.  The  Abolition  leaders  were,  never 
theless,  drawn  largely  from  the  clerical 
ranks ;  but  they  were  Unitarians,  Methodists, 
Congregationalists,  Baptists,  etc.,  and  were 
generally  driven  from  their  own  pulpits  in 
consequence  of  their  opinions  about  Slavery. 
The  Ecclesiastical  Apologists  for  Slavery 
founded  their  case  upon  the  New  Testament. 
A  literature  of  exegesis  was  in  existence  of 
which  the  "  View  of  Slavery "  by  John 
Henry  Hopkins,  D.D.,  L.L.D.,  Episcopal 
Bishop  of  the  Diocese  of  Vermont,  is  a  late 
example.  At  this  time  Zachary  Taylor,  a 
slaveholder  and  a  devout  Episcopalian,  was 
president  of  the  United  States. 

200 


THE   RYNDERS    MOB 

The  situation  was  a  difficult  one  for  the 
Evangelical,  anti-sectarian  mind  to  deal  with. 
What  was  the  use  of  quoting  the  New  Testa 
ment  to  slaveholders,  who  were  already  for 
tified  out  of  that  very  volume?  The  effect 
of  the  situation  on  Garrison's  temperament 
may  be  seen  in  the  meeting  at  the  Taber 
nacle.  There  is  a  demonic  element  in  what 
he  says :  his  utterance  is  forced  out  of  him : 
it  is  not  calculated.  You  could  not  repro 
duce  the  spirit  of  this  utterance  except  at 
the  cost  of  two  centuries  of  human  passion. 
There  is  a  demonic  element  also  in  Garri 
son's  courage.  He  displays,  on  this  occa- 
eion,  at  least  two  kinds  of  genius,  the  genius 
of  satire, —  Voltaire  might  have  uttered  the 
scathing  slashes  about  "  Christ  in  the  presi- 
dental  chair," — and  the  all  but  antipodal 
genius  of  infinite  sweetness  of  temperament. 

The  New  York  Herald  in  advance  of  the 
meeting  denounced  Garrison  for  many  days 
in  succession,  and  advised  the  breaking  up 
of  the  meeting  by  violence.  According  to 
the  Herald,  "  Garrison  boldly  urges  the  ut 
ter  overthrow  of  the  churches,  the  Sabbath, 
and  the  Bible.  Nothing  has  been  sacred 
with  him  but  the  ideal  intellect  of  the  negro 
race.  To  elevate  this  chimera,  he  has  urged 
the  necessity  of  an  immediate  overthrow  of 

201 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON, 

the  Government,  a  total  disrespect  for  the 
Constitution,  actual  disruption  and  annihila 
tion  of  the  Union,  and  a  cessation  of  all 
order,  legal  or  divine,  which  does  not  square 
with  his  narrow  views  of  what  constitutes 
human  liberty.  Never,  in  the  time  of  the 
French  Revolution  and  blasphemous  atheism, 
was  there  more  malevolence  and  unblushing 
wickedness  avowed  than  by  this  same  Gar 
rison.  Indeed,  he  surpasses  Robespierre  and 
his  associates,  for  he  has  no  design  of  build 
ing  up.  His  only  object  is  to  destroy. 
.  .  .  In  Boston,  a  few  months  ago,  a 
convention  was  held,  the  object  of  which 
was  the  overthrow  of  Sunday  worship. 
Thus  it  appears  that  nothing  divine  or  sec 
ular  is  respected  by  these  fanatics.  .  .  . 
When  free  discussion  does  not  promote  the 
public  good,  it  has  no  more  right  to  exist 
than  a  bad  government  that  is  dangerous  and 
oppressive  to  the  common  weal.  It  should 
be  overthrown.  On  the  question  of  useful 
ness  to  the  public  of  the  packed,  organized 
meetings  of  these  Abolitionists,  socialists, 
Sabbath-breakers,  and  anarchists,  there  can 
be  but  one  result  arrived  at  by  prudence 
and  patriotism.  They  are  dangerous  as 
semblies —  calculated  for  mischief,  and 
treasonable  in  their  character  and  purposes. 

202 


THE   RYNDERS   MOB 

Though  the  law  cannot  reach  them,  public 
opinion  can;  and  as,  in  England,  a  peaceful 
dissent  from  such  doctrines  as  these  fellows 
would  promulgate  —  a  strong  expression  of 
hisses  and  by  counter  statements  and  exposi 
tions,  so  here  in  New  York  we  may  antici 
pate  that  there  are  those  who  will  enter  the 
arena  of  discussion,  and  send  out  the  true 
opinion  of  the  public.  .  .  ." 

The  meeting  of  May  7,  at  the  Tabernacle, 
was  a  vast  assembly  which  contained  many 
respectable  people,  intermingled  with  whom 
was  an  organized  element  of  impending 
mob.  The  leader  of  the  mob  was  a  well- 
know  ruffian  called  Isaiah  Rynders,  "  a  na 
tive  American,  of  mixed  German  and  Irish 
lineage,  now  some  forty-six  years  of  age. 
He  began  life  as  a  boatman  on  the  Hudson 
River,  and,  passing  easily  into  the  sporting 
class,  went  to  seek  his  fortunes  as  a  profes 
sional  gambler  in  the  paradise  of  the  South 
west.  In  this  region  he  became  familiar 
with  all  forms  of  violence,  including  the  in 
stitution  of  slavery.  After  many  personal 
hazards  and  vicissitudes,  he  returned  to  New 
York  city,  where  he  proved  to  be  admirably 
qualified  for  local  political  leadership  in  con 
nection  with  Tammany  Hall.  A  sporting- 
house  which  he  opened  became  a  Democratic 
203 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

rendezvous  and  the  headquarters  of  the  Em 
pire  Club,  an  organization  of  roughs  and 
desperadoes  who  acknowledged  his  '  cap 
taincy.'  His  campaigning  in  behalf  of  Polk 
and  Dallas  in  1844  secured  him  the  friendly 
patronage  of  the  successful  candidate  for 
Vice-President,  and  he  took  office  as 
Weigher  in  the  Custom-house  of  the  me 
tropolis.  He  found  time,  while  thus  em 
ployed,  to  engineer  the  Astor  Place  riot  on 
behalf  of  the  actor  Forrest  against  his  Eng 
lish  rival  Macready,  on  May  10,  1849,  an<i 
the  year  1850  opened  with  his  trial  for  this 
atrocity  and  his  successful  defense  by  John 
Van  Buren.  On  February  16  he  and  his 
Club  broke  up  an  anti-Wilmot  Proviso  meet 
ing  in  New  York  —  a  seeming  inconsistency, 
but  it  was  charged  against  Rynders  that  he 
had  offered  to  '  give  the  State  of  New  York 
to  Clay  '  in  the  election  of  1844  f°r  $3O>°°°» 
and  had  met  with  reluctant  refusal.  In 
March  he  was  arrested  for  a  brutal  assault 
on  a  gentleman  in  a  hotel,  but  the  victim  and 
the  witnesses  found  it  prudent  not  to  appear 
against  a  ruffian  who  did  not  hesitate  to 
threaten  the  district-attorney  in  open  court. 
Meanwhile,  the  new  Whig  Administration 
quite  justifiably  discharged  Rynders  from 
the  Custom-house,  leaving  him  free  to  pose 
204 


THE   RYNDERS   MOB 

as  a  savior  of  the  Union  against  traitors  — 
a  savior  of  society  against  blasphemers  and 
infidels  wherever  encountered.  .  .  ." 

When  the  meeting  was  brought  to  order 
Mr.  Garrison,  as  an  opening  exercise,  read 
certain  passages  of  the  Bible,  chosen  with 
reference  to  their  bearing  upon  the  slave 
trade :  "  The  Lord  standeth  up  to  plead, 
and  standeth  to  judge  the  people.  .  .  . 
What  mean  ye  that  ye  beat  my  people  to 
pieces,  and  grind  the  faces  of  the  poor?  saith 
the  Lord  God  of  Hosts.  .  .  .  Associ 
ate  yourselves,  O  ye  people,  and  ye  shall  be 
broken  in  pieces;  gird  yourselves,  and  ye 
shall  be  broken  in  pieces.  .  .  .  They  all 
lie  in  wait  for  blood ;  they  hunt  every  man 
his  brother  with  a  net.  .  .  .  Hide  the 
outcasts,  bewray  not  him  that  wandereth; 
let  mine  outcasts  dwell  with  thee ;  be  thou  a 
covert  to  them  from  the  face  of  the  spoiler." 

"  To  Dr.  Furness,  who  sat  beside  Mr. 
Garrison,  these  selections  (in  full,  not  in  our 
abstract)  seemed  '  most  admirably  adapted  to 
the  existing  state  of  our  country.  His  read 
ing,  however,  was  not  remarkably  effective. 
It  was  like  the  ordinary  reading  of  the  pul 
pit/ —  and  hence  not  calculated  to  stir  the 
wrath  of  the  ungodly. 
-  "  The  reading  of  the  Treasurer's  report 
205 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

followed,  and  then  Mr.  Garrison,  resigning 
the  chair  to  Francis  Jackson,  proceeded  to 
make  the  first  speech  of  the  day. 

"He  began,"  says  Dr.  Furness,  "with 
stating  that  they,  the  members  of  the  Anti- 
slavery  Society,  regarded  the  Anti-slavery 
cause  as  emphatically  the  Christian  move 
ment  of  the  day.  Nothing  could  be  more 
explicit  than  his  recognition  of  the  truth  and 
divine  authority  of  the  Christianity  of  the 
New  Testament.  He  went  on  to  examine 
the  popular  tests  of  religion,  and  to  show 
their  defectiveness.  In  so  doing,  his  man 
ner  was  grave  and  dignified.  There  was  no 
bitterness,  no  levity.  His  manner  of  speak 
ing  was  simple,  clerical,  and  Christian.  His 
subject  was,  substantially,  that  we  have,  over 
and  over  again,  in  all  the  pulpits  of  the  land 
—  the  inconsistency  of  our  profession  and 
practice  —  although  not  with  the  same  appli 
cation.  .  .  .  Mr.  Garrison  said  great 
importance  was  attached  to  a  belief  in  Jesus. 
We  were  told  that  we  must  believe  in  Jesus. 
And  yet  this  faith  in  Jesus  had  no  vitality, 
no  practical  bearing  on  conduct  and  char 
acter.  He  had  previously,  however,  passed 
in  rapid  review  the  chief  religious  denomina 
tions,  showing  that  they  uttered  no  protest 
against  the  sins  of  the  nation.  He  spoke 
206 


THE   RYNDERS    MOB 

first  in  this  connection  of  the  Roman  Catho 
lic  Church,  stating  that  its  priests  and  mem 
bers  held  slaves  without  incurring  the  re 
buke  of  the  Church." 

Up  to  this  time  the  only  symptoms  of  op 
position  had  been  some  ill-timed  and  sense 
less  applause  —  or  what  seemed  such.  And 
as  it  came  from  one  little  portion  of  the  audi 
ence,  Dr.  Furness  asked  Wendell  Phillips  at 
his  side  what  it  meant.  '  It  means/  he  said, 
*  that  there  is  to  be  a  row/  The  reference 
to  the  Catholic  Church  gave  the  first  opening 
to  the  leader  of  the  gang." 

The  following  is  from  the  New  York  Her 
ald's  account  of  the  meeting:  "  Captain  Ryn- 
ders  (who  occupied  a  position  in  the  back 
ground,  at  one  side  of  the  organ-loft,  and 
commanding  a  bird's  eye  view  of  the  whole 
scene  beneath)  here  said :  Will  you  allow  me 
to  ask  you  a  question?  (Excitement  and  con 
fusion.) 

"  Mr.  Garrison  —  Yes,  sir. 

"  Captain  Rynders  —  The  question  I 
would  ask  is,  whether  there  are  no  other 
churches  as  well  as  the  Catholic  Church, 
whose  clergy  and  lay  members  hold  slaves? 

"  Mr.    Garrison —  Will    the    friend   wait 
for  a  moment,  and  I  will  answer  him  in 
reference  to  other  churches."     (Cheers.) 
207 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

(Dr.  Furness  says  that  Mr.  Garrison  ex 
pressed  no  surprise  at  the  interruption. 
There  was  not  the  slightest  change  in  his 
manner  or  his  voice.  He  simply  said :  "  My 
friend,  if  you  will  wait  a  moment,  your  ques 
tion  shall  be  answered,"  or  something  to  that 
effect.  There  instantly  arose  a  loud  clapping 
around  the  stranger  in  the  gallery,  and  from 
the  outskirts  of  the  audience,  at  different 
points.) 

Captain  Rynders  then  resumed  his  seat. 
Mr.  Garrison  thus  proceeded :  "  Shall  we 
look  to  the  Episcopal  Church  for  hope?  It 
was  the  boast  of  John  C.  Calhoun,  shortly 
before  his  death,  that  that  church  was  im 
pregnable  to  Anti-slavery.  That  vaunt  was 
founded  on  truth,  for  the  Episcopal  clergy 
and  laity  are  buyers  and  sellers  of  human 
flesh.  We  cannot,  therefore,  look  to  them. 
Shall  we  look  to  the  Presbyterian  Church? 
The  whole  weight  of  it  is  on  the  side  of  op 
pression.  Ministers  and  people  buy  and  sell 
slaves,  apparently  without  any  compunc 
tious  visitings  of  conscience.  -We  cannot, 
therefore,  look  to  them,  nor  to  the  Baptists, 
nor  the  Methodists ;  for  they,  too,  are  against 
the  slave,  and  all  the  sects  are  combined  to 
prevent  that  jubilee  which  it  is  the  will  of 
God  should  come.  .  .  . 
208 


THE    RYNDERS    MOB 

"  Be  not  startled  when  I  say  that  a  belief 
in  Jesus  is  no  evidence  of  goodness  (hisses) ; 
no,  friends. 

"  Voice  —  Yes  it  is. 

"  Mr.  Garrison  —  Our  friend  says  '  yes  ' ; 
my  position  is  '  no.'  It  is  worthless  as  a 
test,  for  the  reason  I  have  already  assigned 
in  reference  to  the  other  tests.  His  praises 
are  sung  in  Louisiana,  Alabama,  and  the 
other  Southern  States  just  as  well  as  in 
Massachusetts. 

"  Captain  Rynders  —  Are  you  aware  that 
the  slaves  in  the  South  have  their  prayer- 
meetings  in  honor  of  Christ? 

"  Mr.  Garrison  —  Not  a  slaveholding  or  a 
slave-breeding  Jesus.  (Sensation.)  The 
slaves  believe  in  a  Jesus  that  strikes  off 
chains.  In  this  country,  Jesus  has  become 
obsolete.  A  profession  in  him  is  no  longer 
a  test.  Who  objects  to  his  course  in  Ju 
daea?  The  old  Pharisees  are  extinct,  and 
may  safely  be  denounced.  Jesus  is  the  most 
respectable  person  in  the  United  States. 
(Great  sensation,  and  murmurs  of  disap 
probation.)  Jesus  sits  in  the  President's 
chair  of  the  United  States.  (A  thrill  of 
horror  here  seemed  to  run  through  the  as 
sembly.)  Zachary  Taylor  sits  there,  which 
is  the  same  thing,  for  he  believes  in  Jesus. 
209 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

He  believes  in  war,  and  the  Jesus  '  that  gave 
the  Mexicans  hell/  (Sensation,  uproar,  and 
confusion.) 

"  The  name  of  Zachary  Taylor  had 
scarcely  passed  Mr.  Garrison's  lips  when 
Captain  Rynders,  with  something  like  a 
howl,  forsaking  his  strategic  position  on  the 
border-line  of  the  gallery  and  the  platform, 
dashed  headlong  down  towards  the  speaker's 
desk,  followed,  with  shouting  and  impreca 
tions  and  a  terrifying  noise,  by  the  mass  of 
his  backers.  The  audience,  despite  a  natural 
agitation,  gave  way  to  no  panic.  The 
Abolitionist  leaders  upon  the  platform  re 
mained  imperturbable.  *  I  was  not  aware/ 
writes  Dr.  Furness,  '  of  being  under  any  ap 
prehension  of  personal  violence.  We  were 
all  like  General  Jackson's  cotton-bales  at 
New  Orleans.  Our  demeanor  made  it  im 
possible  for  the  rioters  to  use  any  physical 
force  against  us.'  Rynders  found  himself 
in  the  midst  of  Francis  and  Edmund  Jack 
son,  of  Wendell  Phillips,  of  Edmund 
Quincy,  of  Charles  F.  Hovey,  of  William 
H.  Furness,  of  Samuel  May,  Jr.,  of  Sydney 
Howard  Gay,  of  Isaac  T.  Hopper,  of  Henry 
C.  Wright,  of  Abbey  Kelley  Foster,  of  Fred 
erick  Douglass,  of  Mr.  Garrison  —  against 
whom  his  menaces  were  specially  directed. 

210 


THE    RYNDERS    MOB 

Never  was  a  human  being  more  out  of  his 
element." 

The  following,  according  to  the  Herald, 
was  what  greeted  Mr.  Garrison's  ear: 

"  Captain  Rynders  (clenching  his  fist)  — 
I  will  not  allow  you  to  assail  the  President 
of  the  United  States.  You  shan't  do  it 
(shaking  his  fist  at  Mr.  Garrison). 

"  Many  voices  —  Turn  him  out,  turn  him 
out! 

"  Captain  Rynders  —  If  a  million  of  you 
were  there,  I  would  not  allow  the  President 
of  the  United  States  to  be  insulted.  As 
long  as  you  confined  yourself  to  your  sub 
ject,  I  did  not  interfere;  but  I  will  not  per 
mit  you  or  any  other  man  to  misrepresent 
the  President." 

Mr.  Garrison,  as  the  Rev.  Samuel  May 
testifies,  "  calmly  replied  that  he  had  simply 
quoted  some  recent  words  of  General  Tay 
lor,  and  appealed  to  the  audience  if  he  had 
said  aught  in  disrespect  of  him."  "  You 
ought  not  to  interrupt  us,"  he  continued  to 
Rynders  —  in  the  quietest  manner  conceiv 
able,  as  Dr.  Furness  relates.  "  We  go  upon 
the  principle  of  hearing  everybody.  If  you 
wish  to  speak,  I  will  keep  order,  and  you 
shall  be  heard."  The  din,  however,  in 
creased.  '  The  Hutchinsons,"  continues  Dr. 

211 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

Furness,  "  who  were  wont  to  sing  at  the 
Anti-slavery  meetings,  were  in  the  gallery, 
and  they  attempted  to  raise  a  song,  to  soothe 
the  savages  with  music.  But  it  was  of  no 
avail.  Rynders  drowned  their  fine  voices 
with  noise  and  shouting."  Still,  a  knock 
down  argument  with  a  live  combatant  would 
have  suited  him  better  than  mere  Bedlam- 
itish  disturbance.  He  was  almost  gratified 
by  young  Thomas  L.  Kane,  son  of  Judge 
Kane  of  Philadelphia,  who,  seeing  the  rush 
of  the  mob  upon  the  platform,  had  himself 
leaped  there,  to  protect  his  townsman,  Dr. 
Furness.  "  They  shall  not  touch  a  hair  of 
your  head,"  he  said  in  a  tone  of  great  ex 
citement;  and,  as  the  strain  became  more 
intense,  he  rushed  up  to  Rynders  and  shook 
his  fist  in  his  face.  He  said  to  me  (Dr. 
Furness)  with  the  deepest  emphasis:  "  If  he 
touches  Mr.  Garrison  I'll  kill  him/'  But 
Mr.  Garrison's  composure  was  more  than 
a  coat  of  mail. 

The  knot  was  cut  by  Francis  Jackson's 
formal  offer  of  the  floor  to  Rynders  as  soon 
as  Mr.  Garrison  had  finished  his  remarks; 
with  an  invitation  meanwhile  to  take  a  seat 
on  the  platform.  This,  says  Mr.  May,  he 
scoutingly  refused;  but,  seeing  the  manifest 
fairness  of  the  president's  offer,  drew  back  a 

212 


THE   RYNDERS    MOB 

little,  and  stood,  with  folded  arms,  waiting 
for  Mr.  Garrison  to  conclude,  which  soon  he 
did, — •  offering  a  resolution  in  these  terms: 

"  Resolved,  That  the  Anti-slavery  move 
ment,  instead  of  being  *  infidel/  in  an  evil 
sense  (as  is  falsely  alleged),  is  truly  Chris 
tian,  in  the  primitive  meaning  of  that  term, 
and  the  special  embodiment  in  this  country 
of  whatever  is  loyal  to  God  and  benevolent 
to  man;  and  that,  in  view  of  the  palpable 
enormity  of  slavery  —  of  the  religious  and 
political  professions  of  the  people  —  of  the 
age  in  which  we  live,  blazing  with  the  con 
centrated  light  of  many  centuries  —  indif 
ference  or  hostility  to  this  movement  indi 
cates  a  state  of  mind  more  culpable  than  was 
manifested  by  the  Jewish  nation  in  rejecting 
Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  eighteen  hundred  years 
ago." 

With  these  words  the  speaker  retired,  to 
resume  the  presidency  of  the  meeting. 

"  The  close  of  Mr.  Garrison's  address," 
says  Dr.  Furness,  "  brought  down  Rynders 
again,  who  vociferated  and  harangued,  at 
one  time  on  the  platform,  and  then  pushing 
down  into  the  aisles,  like  a  madman  followed 
by  his  keepers.  Through  the  whole,  noth 
ing  could  be  more  patient  and  serene  than 
the  bearing  of  Mr.  Garrison.  I  have  al- 
213 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

ways  revered  Mr.  Garrison  for  his  devoted, 
uncompromising  fidelity  to  his  great  cause. 
To-day  I  was  touched  to  the  heart  by  his 
calm  and  gentle  manners.  There  was  no 
agitation,  no  scorn,  no  heat,  but  the  quiet 
ness  of  a  man  engaged  in  simple  duties." 

After  some  parleying,  it  appeared  that 
Rynders  had  a  spokesman  who  preferred  to 
speak  after  Dr.  Furness. 

"  Accordingly,"  says  the  latter,  "  I  spoke 
my  little,  anxiously  prepared  word.  I  never 
recall  that  hour  without  blessing  myself  that 
I  was  called  to  speak  precisely  at  that  mo 
ment.  At  any  other  stage  of  the  proceed 
ings,  it  would  have  been  wretchedly  out  of 
place.  As  it  was,  my  speech  fitted  in  almost 
as  well  as  if  it  had  been  impromptu,  although 
a  sharp  eye  might  easily  have  discovered 
that  I  was  speaking  memoriter.  Rynders 
interrupted  me  again  and  again,  exclaiming 
that  I  lied,  that  I  was  personal ;  but  he  ended 
with  applauding  me !  " 

No  greater  contrast  to  what  was  to  follow 
could  possibly  be  imagined  than  the  genial 
manner,  firm  tones,  and  self-possession,  the 
refined  discourse,  of  this  Unitarian  clergy 
man,  who  was  felt  to  have  turned  the  cur 
rent  of  the  meeting.  There  uprose,  as  per 
agreement,  one  "  Professor  "  Grant,  a  seedy- 
214 


THE    RYNDERS    MOB 

looking  personage,  having  one  hand  tied 
round  with  a  dirty  cotton  cloth.  Mr.  Garri 
son  recognized  him  as  a  former  pressman  in 
the  Liberator  office.  His  thesis  was  that  the 
blacks  were  not  men,  but  belonged  to  the 
monkey  tribe.  His  speech  proved  dull  and 
tiresome,  and  was  made  sport  of  by  his  own 
set,  whom  Mr.  Garrison  had  to  call  to  order. 
There  were  now  loud  cries  for  Frederick 
Douglass,  who  came  forward  to  where  Ryn- 
ders  stood  in  the  conspicuous  position  he 
had  taken  when  he  thought  the  meeting  was 
his,  and  who  remained  in  it,  too  mortified 
even  to  creep  away,  when  he  found  it  was 
somebody  else's.  "  Now  you  can  speak," 
said  he  to  Douglass;  "  but  mind  what  I  say: 
if  you  speak  disrespectfully  (of  the  South, 
or  Washington,  or  Patrick  Henry)  I'll 
knock  you  off  the  stage."  Nothing  daunted, 
the  ex-fugitive  from  greater  terrors  began: 

:<  The  gentleman  who  has  just  spoken  has 
undertaken  to  prove  that  the  blacks  are  not 
human  beings.  He  has  examined  our 
whole  conformation,  from  top  to  toe.  I 
cannot  follow  him  in  his  argument.  I  will 
assist  him  in  it,  however.  I  offer  myself 
for  your  examination.  Am  I  a  man  ?  " 

The  audience  responded  with  a  thunder 
ous  affirmative,  which  Captain  Rynders 
215 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

sought  to  break  by  exclaiming:  "  You  are 
not  a  black  man;  you  are  only  half  a  nig 
ger."  "  Then,"  replied  Mr.  Douglass,  turn 
ing  upon  him  with  the  blandest  of  smiles 
and  an  almost  affectionate  obeisance,  "  I  am 
half-brother  to  Captain  Rynders!"  He 
would  not  deny  that  he  was  the  son  of  a 
slaveholder,  born  of  Southern  "  amalgama 
tion  " ;  a  fugitive,  too,  like  Kossuth  — "  an 
other  half-brother  of  mine"  (to  Rynders). 
He  spoke  of  the  difficulties  thrown  in  the 
way  of  industrious  colored  people  at  the 
North,  as  he  had  himself  experienced  — 
this  by  way  of  answer  to  Horace  Greeley, 
who  had  recently  complained  of  their  in 
efficiency  and  dependence.  Criticism  of  the 
editor  of  the  Tribune  being  grateful  to 
Rynders,  a  political  adversary,  "  he  added 
a  word  to  Douglass's  against  Greeley.  '  I 
am  happy/  said  Douglass,  f  to  have  the  as- 
sent  of  my  half-brother  here'  pointing  to 
Rynders,  and  convulsing  the  audience  with 
laughter.  After  this,  Rynders,  finding  how 
he  was  played  with,  took  care  to  hold  his 
peace;  but  someone  of  Rynders'  company 
in  the  gallery  undertook  to  interrupt  the 
speaker.  '  It's  of  no  use/  said  Mr.  Doug 
lass,  '  I've  Captain  Rynders  here  to  back 
me.' '  "  We  were  born  here,"  he  said 
216 


THE   RYNDERS   MOB 

finally,  "  we  are  not  dying  out,  and  we  mean 
to  stay  here.  We  made  the  clothes  you  have 
on,  the  sugar  you  put  into  your  tea.  We 
would  do  more  if  allowed."  "  Yes,"  said 
a  voice  in  the  crowd,  "  you  would  cut  our 
throats  for  us."  "  No,"  was  the  quick  re 
sponse,  "  but  we  would  cut  your  hair  for 
you." 

Douglass  concluded  his  triumphant  re 
marks  by  calling  upon  the  Rev.  Samuel  R. 
Ward,  editor  of  the  Impartial  Citizen,  to 
succeed  him.  "  All  eyes,"  says  Dr.  Fur- 
ness,  "  were  instantly  turned  to  the  back  of 
the  platform,  or  stage  rather,  so  dramatic 
was  the  scene;  and  there,  amidst  a  group, 
stood  a  large  man,  so  black  that,  as  Wendell 
Phillips  said,  when  he  shut  his  eyes  you 
could  not  see  him.  As  he  approached, 
Rynders  exclaimed :  '  Well,  this  is  the  orig 
inal  nigger.*  '  I've  heard  of  the  magnanim 
ity  of  Captain  Rynders/  said  Ward,  '  but 
the  half  has  not  been  told  me ! '  And  then 
he  went  on  with  a  noble  voice  and  his  speech 
was  such  a  strain  of  eloquence  as  I  never 
heard  excelled  before  or  since."  The  mob 
had  to  applaud  him,  too,  and  it  is  the  high 
est  praise  to  record  that  his  unpremeditated 
utterance  maintained  the  level  of  Doug 
lass's,  and  ended  the  meeting  with  a  sense 
217 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

of  climax  —  demonstrating  alike  the  hu 
manity  and  the  capacity  of  the  full-blooded 
negro. 

"  When  he  ceased  speaking,  the  time  had 
expired  for  which  the  Tabernacle  was  en 
gaged,  and  we  had  to  adjourn.  Never/' 
continues  Dr.  Furness,  "  was  there  a 
grander  triumph  of  intelligence,  of  mind, 
over  brute  force.  Two  colored  men,  whose 
claim  to  be  considered  human  was  denied, 
had,  by  mere  force  of  intellect,  overwhelmed 
their  maligners  with  confusion.  As  the 
audience  was  thinning  out,  I  went  down  on 
the  floor  to  see  some  friends  there.  Ryn- 
ders  came  by.  I  could  not  help  saying  to 
him :  *  How  shall  I  thank  you  for  what  you 
have  done  for  us  to-day?'  'Well/  said 
he,  '  I  do  not  like  to  hear  my  country 
abused,  but  that  last  thing  that  you  said, 
that's  the  truth/  That  last  thing  was,  I  be 
lieve,  a  simple  assertion  of  the  right  of  the 
people  to  think  and  speak  freely." 


218 


IX 

GARRISON   AND   EMERSON 

THESE  two  men  were  almost  exactly  the 
same  age;  for  Emerson  was  born  in  1803 
and  Garrison  in  1805.  The  precocity  of 
Garrison,  however,  who  became  one  of  the 
figure-heads  of  his  day  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
four,  and  the  tardy,  inward  development  of 
Emerson,  who  did  not  become  widely 
known  till  almost  twenty  years  later,  seem 
to  class  them  in  separate  generations. 
Each  of  the  men  was  a  specialist  of  the  ex- 
tremest  kind;  Garrison,  devoted  to  the  vis 
ible  and  particular  evils  of  his  times,  Emer 
son,  seeking  always  the  abstraction,  and  able 
to  see  the  facts  before  his  face  only  by  the 
aid  of  general  laws;  Garrison  all  heart, 
Emerson  all  head;  Garrison  determined  to 
remake  the  world,  Emerson  convinced  that 
he  must  keep  his  eyes  on  the  stars  and  wait 
for  his  message.  Each  of  these  men  was, 
nevertheless,  twin  to  the  other.  Their 
spirit  was  the  same,  and  the  influence  of 
each  was  a  strand  in  the  same  reaction,  a 
219 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

cry  from  the  same  abyss.  Emerson,  no  less 
than  Garrison,  was  the  voice  of  Abolition, 
and  the  dying  Theodore  Parker  names  him 
as  a  prophet.  I  should  sum  up  Garrison's 
whole  life-work  in  one  word,  Courage. 
And  I  cannot  find  another  word,  except 
Courage  to  sum  up  Emerson. 

The  function  of  Garrison  was  to  crack 
up,  to  dissolve.  He  cannot  bear  to  see  two 
men  agree  about  anything,  he  cannot  tol 
erate  assent;  toleration  is  the  enemy,  tol 
eration  is  the  sin  of  the  age.  In  like  man 
ner  is  Emerson  a  sphinx  who  puts  questions 
to  his  age.  His  thought  cannot  be  under 
stood  without  a  thorough  pulling  down  of 
extant  prejudices.  Both  men  are  dissolv 
ents.  With  Emerson,  this  was  idea;  with 
Garrison,  it  was  function.  Garrison  does, 
he  knows  not  what, —  he  talks  foaming,  he 
cannot  fit  two  conceptions  together;  but  he 
is  generally,  and  on  the  whole,  the  agent  of 
dissolution  and  re-crystallization.  Emer 
son  has  only  one  note.  He  sits  helplessly 
on  his  perch  and  utters  his  note ;  —  waits 
a  while,  and  again  utters  his  note ;  and  he  is 
everywhere  and  always  the  agent  of  disso 
lution  and  re-crystallization.  To  compare 
the  relations  of  these  men  to  each  other 
brings  out  very  vividly  the  strong  and  the 
220 


GARRISON   AND    EMERSON 

weak  sides  of  each  of  them ;  for  each  seems 
to  split  the  age,  and  show  the  sutures  in  the 
skull  of  the  world;  each  is  the  key  to  the 
puzzle,  and  each  is  the  missing  half  of  the 
other's  nature.  That  they  did  not  under 
stand  one  another,  that  there  was  no  plane 
on  which  they  could  meet  (except  for  a 
flash),  is  a  sort  of  proof,  by  paradox,  that 
they  stood  for  the  same  thing  expressed  in 
different  symbols. 

Never  in  all  literature  has  there  been  such 
a  passionate  proclamation  of  the  individual 
as  Emerson  makes ;  and  one  of  the  few  men 
that  ever  lived,  who  best  fulfills  Emerson's 
ideal  picture  of  the  influential  individual,  is 
Garrison.  It  is  indeed  strange  to  reflect 
that  Emerson's  life  was  given  up  to  pictur 
ing  the  strong  man  who  sheds  all  positive 
influence  upon  his  age,  and  receives  nothing 
from  it,  and  yet  to  remember  that  Garri 
son's  activity  in  real  life  was  unsympathetic 
and  even  repulsive  to  Emerson. 

The  fame  of  the  two  men  is  unequal ;  be 
cause  Emerson  had  about  him  a  dry  glint 
.of  the  eternal,  and  his  mind  was  a  unity; 
whereas  Garrison  was  a  professional  agi- 
itator  and  his  mind  was  sometimes  at  odds 
(with  itself.  The  power  that  counts  to 
wards  fame  seems  to  be  the  power  of  vision. 

221 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

A  man  with  vision  leaves  behind  him  a  clear 
picture,  consistent  with  itself,  easily  under 
stood,  popular,  enduring;  and  though  there 
be  but  few  strokes  in  the  sketch,  his  thought 
carries.  The  practical  man,  though  he  have 
the  heart  of  the  Samaritan,  and  do  the  work 
of  a  Titan,  deals  in  more  ephemeral  sym 
bols  and  is  sooner  forgotten.  There  was 
no  single  contemporary  whose  nature  cov 
ered  the  divergent  fields  of  both  of  these 
men.  The  Anti-slavery  Cause  was  always 
badly  crippled  for  lack  of  a  philosopher; 
and  Emerson's  influence  has  always  stood  in 
need  of  more  animal  life  as  a  vehicle  to 
float  it  towards  mankind.  Let  us  review 
the  points  at  which  the  careers  of  the  two 
men  touched  each  other;  remembering  all 
the  time  that  any  age  is  a  unity,  that  all  men 
who  live  in  it  are  members  of  each  other, 
and  that  the  Unconscious  is  the  important 
part  of  life. 

Emerson,  after  the  loss  of  his  first  wife, 
followed  by  a  breakdown  in  health  and  a 
year  of  gloomy  travel  in  Europe,  returned 
to  Boston  in  1833,  a  frail  man  of  thirty, 
with  a  theological  training,  the  tastes  of  a 
recluse,  and  an  immense,  unworldly  ambi 
tion.  To  live  in  a  village,  to  write  in  his 
journal,  to  walk  in  the  woods  and  ruminate, 

222 


GARRISON    AND    EMERSON 

—  such  was  to  be  his  existence.     The  or 
ganic  reticence  of  Emerson  has  all  but  con 
cealed  the  strong  current  of  purpose  that 
ran  beneath  the  apparent  futility  of  his  ex 
ternal  life.     He  was  indeed  a  man  of  iron; 
and  both  he  and  Garrison  might  be  com 
pared  to  Ignatius  Loyola  in  respect  to  their 
will.     Emerson   writes   in   his   journal   in 

1834: 

:<  The  philosophy  of  Waiting  needs  some 
times  to  be  unfolded.  Thus  he  who  is 
qualified  to  act  upon  the  public,  if  he  does 
not  act  on  many,  may  yet  act  intensely  on 
a  few;  if  he  does  not  act  much  upon  any, 
but,  from  insulated  condition  and  unfit  com 
panions,  seems  quite  withdrawn  into  him 
self,  still,  if  he  know  and  feel  his  obliga 
tions,  he  may  be  (unknown  and  uncon 
sciously)  hiving  knowledge  and  concentrat 
ing  powers  to  act  well  hereafter,  and  a  very 
remote  hereafter."  "  A  remote  hereafter/' 

—  this  was  ever  in  Emerson's  mind.     He 
feels  himself  to  be  an  outpost  or  advance 
guard  of  future  wisdom.     "  It  is  a  mani 
fest  interest  which  comes  home  to  my  bosom 
and   every  man's  bosom,"   he  continues   a 
page  or  two  later,  "  that  there  should  be  on 
every  tower  Watchers  set  to  observe  and 
report  of  every  new  ray  of  light,  in  what 

223 


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*.."     "_!•:     i'.."*ni~"Lii-    ~     n 

^";i  Trr^f    r£  "^1^   H&T2..      Iz 
rrggyg»f  n&Ti  :  X  is  men:  IT  ILL 


ir    -.»;    is  zhmcn.      ~~^    sr  cc 

.    IIS    iSCSSST1?   ryAHf  ^P"?    frT 


ih.  is  f»g  IT  ii«  irrscc  rnrrrrc:  ::  fas  2S  GET- 


rseir  i    nscinirx    imnir    us 
*Hnnif  Trrg~;inT. —  is  i  isrt  re 

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L£;        _    I        


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

men.  Do  you  ask  me  if  I  would  rattier 
resemble  Jesus  than  any  other  man?  If  I 
should  say  Yes,  I  should  suspect  myself  of 
superstition/' 

This  passage  is  like  the  stalk  of  the  pie 
plant  without  the  sap.  But  nature  had 
gifts  in  her  lap  for  the  youth  that  penned 
it;  and  imagination  can  detect  some  sort  of 
power  even  here.  Here  is  at  least  a  crea 
ture  who  will  test  other  persons  by  him 
self,  and  not  himself  by  others.  The  lack 
ing  element  seems  to  be  experience, —  ex 
perience  of  persons,  experience  of  litera 
ture,  experience  of  emotion.  He  has  the 
coldness  of  crystal,  but  also  its  transparent 
purity.  You  would  not  suspect  the  man 
who  writes  thus  of  holding  a  pastorate  over 
souls, —  of  secretly  regarding  himself  as  a 
bishop  and  an  apostle  to  lost  sheep.  Yet 
such  was  the  fact.  A  care  for  men,  a  love 
of  mankind,  is  the  motive  power  in  him. 

Emerson  is  a  man  whom  we  are  obliged 
to  understand  all  the  time  by  the  light  of 
what  only  breaks  out  of  him  once  in  seven 
years  and  endures  but  for  two  seconds.  By 
the  spark  of  this  betrayal  we  know  him: 
witness  the  opening  of  his  Cooper  Union 
address  which  I  shall  quote  shortly. 

The  Abolitionists,  of  course,  made  a  de- 
226 


GARRISON   AND   EMERSON 

scent  upon  Emerson  in  their  diocesan 
rounds, —  for  they  visited  and  proselytized 
everyone.  May  and  Thompson,  two  of 
Garrison's  lieutenants,  called  upon  Emerson. 
Their  mission  was  incomprehensible  to 
Emerson,  who  writes  in  his  journal:  "  Our 
good  friend,  Samuel  J.  May,  may  instruct  us 
in  many  things."  He  admired  May  but  not 
Thompson,  of  whom  he  says :  "  He  belongs 
I  fear  to  that  great  class  of  the  Vanity- 
stricken.  An  inordinate  thirst  for  notice 
cannot  be  gratified  until  it  has  found  in  its 
gropings  what  is  called  a  cause  that  men 
will  bow  to;  tying  himself  fast  to  that,  the 
small  man  is  then  at  liberty  to  consider  all 
objections  made  to  him  as  proofs  of  folly 
and  the  devil  in  the  objector,  and,  under 
that  screen,  if  he  gets  a  rotten  egg  or  two, 
yet  his  name  sounds  through  the  world  and 
he  is  praised  and  praised." 

Any  one  who  has  followed  May  and 
Thompson  through  good  and  evil  report, 
who  has  felt  the  heat  and  depth  of  their 
devotion  to  truth,  must  almost  wince  at  see 
ing  what  effect  a  visit  from  them  produced 
upon  the  chill-blooded  young  parson  who 
sat  in  his  meager  study,  reading  his  thread 
bare  library  in  the  village  of  Concord. 

We  are  brought  to  see  by  such  anecdotes 
227 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

as  this  that  Anti-slavery  was  a  sort  of  spe 
cial  illumination.  The  greatest  saints  lived 
without  an  understanding  of  Abolition  till, 
suddenly  one  day,  Abolition  broke  out  in 
their  hearts  and  made  them  miserable. 
Abolition  was  a  disease, —  the  disease 
caused  by  the  flooding  of  withered  natures 
with  new  health.  The  infection  jumped 
from  one  man  to  another.  Genius  and  tal 
ent  had  nothing  to  do  with  it;  learning  and 
piety  seem  to  have  been  immune  to  it. 
Emerson  was  no  nearer  to  an  understanding 
of  it  than  if  he  had  been  a  clerk  in  a  drug- 
shop.  He  had,  moreover,  a  dry  disposi 
tion, —  a  cold  wind  seemed  to  blow  out  of 
him, —  and  the  sweat  and  unction  of  emo 
tion  were  always  antipathetic  to  him. 
Nevertheless  Emerson  thought  about  the 
Abolitionists.  It  cannot  be  said  that  he 
thought  about  slavery.  He  neither  saw  nor 
knew  much  about  slavery.  But  he  looked 
out  of  his  window  and  saw  Garrison  and 
the  Abolitionists  shouting  in  the  streets. 
They  invaded  his  musings :  they  troubled  his 
solitude.  He  tries  to  shelve  them  in  his 
mind  by  a  final  analysis ;  but  he  never  quite 
suits  himself,  and  so  tries  again.  His  lec 
ture  on  "  The  Times  "  in  1841,  is  in  reality 
a  lecture  upon  Garrison  and  Garrison's  mul- 
228 


GARRISON   AND   EMERSON 

titudinous  causes.  The  rather  old-maidish 
young  Emerson  was  disgusted  by  the  mis 
cellaneous  and  ramping  enthusiasm  of  Gar 
rison.  He  says,  for  instance,  in  the  lecture 
on  "The  Times": 

"These  reforms  are  our  contemporaries; 
they  are  ourselves ;  our  own  light  and  sight, 
and  conscience ;  they  only  name  the  relation 
which  subsists  between  us  and  the  vicious 
institutions  which  they  go  to  rectify." 
This  is  complimentary  to  the  reformers: 
they  have  at  any  rate,  discovered  the  evils. 
But  Emerson  goes  on  almost  immediately: 
"  The  young  men  who  have  been  vexing  so 
ciety  these  last  years  with  regenerative 
methods,  seem  to  have  made  this  mistake; 
they  all  exaggerated  some  special  means, 
and  all  failed  to  see  that  the  Reform  of  Re 
forms  must  be  accomplished  without  means. 
.  .  .  Those  who  are  urging  with  most 
ardor  what  are  called  the  greatest  benefits 
to  mankind,  are  narrow,  self -pleasing,  con 
ceited  men,  and  affect  us  as  the  insane  do. 
They  bite  us  and  we  run  mad  also.  I 
think  the  work  of  the  reformers  as  innocent 
as  other  work  that  is  done  around  them; 
but  when  I  have  seen  it  near  I  do  not  like  it 
better." 

It  appears,  then,  through  these  last  quoted 
229 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

phrases,  that  Emerson  thinks  the  reformers 
are  quite  off  the  track,  after  all.  But  in  the 
final  sentence  of  the  essay  there  is  another 
phrase  to  the  effect  "  that  the  highest  com 
pliment  man  receives  from  Heaven  is  the 
sending  to  him  its  disguised  and  discred 
ited  angels."  So  Garrison,  it  appears,  was 
a  disguised  angel,  after  all.  The  essay  on 
"  The  Times  "  is  a  glacial  attempt  to  explain 
the  function  of  the  Reformer.  It  contains 
valuable  ideas,  and  beautiful  ideas;  but  it 
leaves  unbridged  the  chasm  between  the  ap 
parent  odiousness  of  the  reformer  and  his 
real  utility.  It  explains  nothing:  it  demon 
strates  only  that  Emerson  did  not  under 
stand  these  particular  "  times "  but  was 
greatly  puzzled  by  them.  Dr.  Holmes  has 
said  "  that  it  would  have  taken  a  long  time 
to  get  rid  of  slavery  if  some  of  Emerson's 
teachings  in  this  lecture  had  been  accepted 
as  the  whole  gospel  of  liberty."  "  But/'  he 
adds,  "  how  much  its  last  sentence  covers 
with  its  soothing  tribute !  " 

Sometimes  in  reading  this  essay  on  "  The 
Times,"  it  has  seemed  to  me  as  if  the  whole 
of  it  were  tinctured  with  condescension ;  — 
just  as  the  paragraph  about  Christ  quoted 
above  is  unpleasant  through  its  crudity  of 
feeling.  There  is,  however,  no  condescen- 
230 


GARRISON   AND    EMERSON 

sion  in  either  passage.  Emerson  was  the 
last  man  in  the  world  to  feel  condescension. 
If  he  had  had  an  inkling  of  what  Garrison's 
activity  signified  he  would  have  shouted  ap 
proval.  Emerson's  humility  was  abun 
dantly  approved  in  the  outcome.  Let  this 
be  noted:  Emerson  was  a  perfectly  coura 
geous  person;  regard  for  appearance  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  ineffectual ity  of  his 
perceptions.  Upon  Lovejoy's  murder,  in 
1837,  Emerson  "  sternly  rejoiced,"  says  Dr. 
Edward  W.  Emerson,  "  that  one  was  found 
to  die  for  humanity  and  the  rights  of  free 
speech  and  opinion  " ;  and  soon  thereafter 
Emerson  delivered  a  lecture  in  Boston  in 
which  "  he  suddenly  looked  the  Boston  audi 
ence  in  the  eyes  "  as  he  said  these  words 
about  Love  joy,  "  and  a  shudder  seemed  to 
run  through  the  audience,  yet  unprepared 
for  this  bold  word,  for  a  martyr  of  an  un 
popular  Cause."  Dr.  Emerson  cites  this 
episode  twice  over,  once  in  the  Journals, 
and  once  in  the  Works,  and  he  adds,  "  of 
course  Lovejoy  had  other  defenders  in  Bos 
ton."  Yes,  Lovejoy  certainly  had  other  de 
fenders  in  Boston;  and  it  is  fortunate  for 
us  that  he  had. 

Emerson's    words    of    approbation    for 
Lovejoy    seem    to    have    been    carefully 
231 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

weighed,  and  he  does  not  mention  slavery. 
He  belonged,  in  fact,  to  that  large  class  of 
people  who  were  shocked  because  free 
speech  was  murdered  in  Love  joy's  murder. 
Now,  inasmuch  as  Emerson  was  lecturing 
before  very  conservative  people,  even  this 
reference  to  "  free  speech  and  opinion " 
called  up  before  the  imagination  of  the  audi 
ence  the  spectre  of  the  Abolition  Cause;  — 
and  a  shudder  warmed  the  room.  Even  so 
remote  an  approval  of  Abolition  as  this,  was 
thought  to  be  very  bold  in  Mr.  Emerson. 

I  believe  that  had  it  not  been  for  Garrison 
and  his  crew,  Mr.  Emerson  would  have  seen 
nothing  in  the  street  as  he  looked  out  of 
his  window  in  the  years  1833-1840.  He 
would,  therefore,  have  turned  his  eyes  upon 
the  heavens,  and  continued  to  develop  a  neo- 
platonic  philosophy.  The  thing  which  he 
did  develop  during  these  years,  and  while  he 
was  thinking  a  good  deal  about  Garrison 
and  wondering  what  was  the  matter  with 
Garrison, —  the  outcome  of  Emerson's  re 
flections  upon  Garrison, —  was  that  picture 
of  the  Just  Man  which  runs  through  Emer 
son's  thought;  that  theory  of  the  perfect 
man,  the  Overman,  the  Apollonian  saint, 
who  accomplishes  all  reforms  without  using 
any  visible  means. 

232 


GARRISON    AND    EMERSON 

In  1844,  Emerson  gives  us  a  glimpse  of 
this  Overman  in  an  essay  entitled  "  The 
New  England  Reformers."  The  :essay 
records  a  lack  of  progress  in  Emerson's 
thought,  and  shows  that  he  had  as  yet  no 
idea  of  the  difference  between  Anti-slavery 
and  the  other  many  and  clamoring  reforms 
of  the  day.  Like  the  essay  on  "  The 
Times  "  it  contains  beautiful  ideas,  but  be 
trays  ignorance  of  this  particular  matter, — 
Anti-slavery.  "  The  man  who  shall  be 
born,"  he  says,  "  whose  advent  men  and 
events  prepare  and  foreshow,  is  one  who 
shall  enjoy  his  connection  with  a  higher 
life,  with  the  man  within  man;  shall  de 
stroy  distrust  by  his  trust,  shall  use  his 
native  but  forgotten  methods,  shall  not 
take  counsel  of  flesh  and  blood,  but  shall 
rely  on  the  Law  alive  and  beautiful  which 
works  over  our  heads  and  under  our 
feet."  "  If,"  he  says  on  another  page, 
"  we  start  objections  to  your  project,  oh, 
friend  of  the  slave,  or  friend  of  the  poor 
or  of  the  race,  understand  well  it  is  because 
we  wish  to  drive  you  to  drive  us  into  your 
measures.  We  wish  to  hear  ourselves  con 
futed.  We  are  haunted  with  a  belief  that 
you  have  a  secret  which  it  would  highliest 
advantage  us  to  learn,  and  we  would  force 
233 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

you  to  impart  it  to  us,  though  it  should 
bring  us  to  prison  or  to  worse  extrem- 
ity." 

This  last  passage  is  an  echo  of  the  ad 
mirable  fooling  of  Plato's  dialogues.  But 
it  is  not  in  phrases  like  these  that  men  show 
their  understanding  of  a  subject  like 
slavery.  The  time  shall  come  when  the  fire 
shall  descend  on  Emerson  and  he  shall  tear 
his  mantle  and  put  dust  upon  his  head.  If 
you  would  see  how  a  man  speaks  when  the 
virus  of  Anti-slavery  has  really  entered  his 
veins,  you  must  turn  to  the  address  that 
Emerson  delivered  at  Cooper  Union  in  New 
York  on  March  7th,  1854.  It  is  the  Fugi 
tive  Slave  Law  that  has  aroused  the  seer 
and  wrenched  him  from  his  tripod.  He 
hates  to  leave  his  study,  yet  must  leave  it. 
His  voice  is  strident;  he  forgets  the  ameni 
ties,  and  begins  speaking  almost  without 
making  a  bow  to  his  audience,  and  while  he 
is  still  removing  his  overcoat. 

"  I  do  not  often  speak  to  public  questions ; 
—  they  are  odious  and  hurtful,  and  it  seems 
like  meddling  or  leaving  your  work.  I 
have  my  own  spirits  in  prison;  —  spirits  in 
deeper  prisons,  whom  no  man  visits  if  I  do 
not.  And  then  I  see  what  havoc  it  makes 
with  any  good  mind,  a  dissipated  philan- 
234 


GARRISON   AND    EMERSON 

thropy.  The  one  thing  not  to  be  forgiven 
to  intellectual  persons  is,  not  to  know  their 
own  tasks,  or  to  take  their  ideas  from 
others.  From  this  want  of  manly  rest  in 
their  own  and  rash  acceptance  of  other  peo 
ple's  watchwords,  come  the  imbecility  and 
fatigue  of  their  conversation."  He  contin 
ues  to  speak  in  haste,  making  use  of  the 
personal  pronoun, —  belligerent,  reckless. 
"  I  have  lived  all  my  life  without  suffering 
any  known  inconvenience  from  American 
Slavery,  I  never  saw  it;  I  never  heard  the 
whip;  I  never  felt  the  check  on  my  free 
speech  and  action,  until,  the  other  day,  when 
Mr.  Webster,  by  his  personal  influence, 
brought  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  on  the 
country.  I  say  Mr.  Webster,  for  though 
the  Bill  was  not  his,  it  is  yet  notorious  that 
he  was  the  life  and  soul  of  it,  that  he  gave 
it  all  he  had :  it  cost  him  his  life,  and  under 
the  shadow  of  his  great  name  inferior  men 
sheltered  themselves,  threw  their  ballots  for 
it  and  made  the  law.  I  say  inferior  men. 
There  were  all  sorts  of  what  are  called 
brilliant  men,  accomplished  men,  men  of 
high  station,  a  President  of  the  United 
States,  Senators,  men  of  eloquent  speech, 
but  men  without  self-respect,  without  char 
acter,  and  it  was  strange  to  see  that  office, 
235 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

age,  fame,  talent,  even  a  repute  for  honesty, 
all  count  for  nothing." 

Emerson  next  discovers  that  Webster 
(formerly  one  of  his  gods)  has  never  said 
anything  of  any  consequence  anyway.  "  If 
his  moral  sensibility  had  been  proportioned 
to  the  force  of  his  understanding,  what  lim 
its  could  have  been  set  to  his  genius  and 
beneficent  power  ?  But  he  wanted  that  deep 
source  of  inspiration.  Hence  a  sterility  of 
thought,  the  want  of  generalization  in  his 
speeches,  and  the  curious  fact  that,  with  a 
general  ability  which  impresses  all  the 
world,  there  is  not  a  single  general  remark, 
not  an  observation  on  life  and  manners,  not 
an  aphorism  that  can  pass  into  literature 
from  his  writings." 

Emerson  now  has  the  disease  of  Anti- 
slavery.  The  proof  is  that  he  feels  obliged 
to  take  some  sort  of  personal  action.  He 
feels  responsible  to  the  community  for  the 
educated  classes.  "  The  way  in  which  the 
country  was  dragged  to  consent  to  this  (the 
Fugitive  Slave  Law),  and  the  disastrous  de 
fection  (on  the  miserable  cry  of  Union) 
of  the  men  of  letters,  of  the  colleges,  of 
educated  men,  nay,  of  some  preachers  of 
religion, —  was  the  darkest  passage  in  the 
history."  And  again:  "  Yet  the  lovers  of 
236 


GARRISON    AND    EMERSON 

liberty  may  with  reason  tax  the  coldness 
and  indifferentism  of  scholars  and  literary 
men.  They  are  lovers  of  liberty  in  Greece 
and  Rome  and  in  the  English  Common 
wealth,  but  they  are  lukewarm  lovers  of 
the  liberty  of  America  in  1854.  The  Uni 
versities  are  not,  as  in  Hobbes's  time,  *  the 
core  of  rebellion/  no,  but  the  seat  of  inert 
ness."  We  find  no  avoidance  of  the  word 
"  slavery "  in  this  address.  Every  other 
word  seems  to  be  "Slavery,  slavery!" 
"  A  man  who  steals  another  man's  labor 
steals  away  his  own  faculties ;  his  integrity, 
his  humanity  is  flowing  away  from  him. 
The  habit  of  oppression  cuts  out  the  moral 
eyes,  and,  though  the  intellect  goes  on  sim 
ulating  the  moral  as  before,  its  sanity  is 
gradually  destroyed.  It  takes  away  the 
presentiments."  And  finally  in  the  last 
paragraph,  comes  a  fierce,  frank,  almost  in 
coherent,  acknowledgment  of  the  country's 
debt  to  the  Abolitionists.  "  I  respect  the 
Anti-slavery  Society.  It  is  the  Cassandra 
that  has  foretold  all  that  has  befallen,  fact 
for  fact,  years  ago ;  foretold  all,  and  no  man 
laid  it  to  heart.  It  seemed,  as  the  Turks 
say,  *  Fate  makes  that  a  man  should  not 
believe  his  own  eyes/  But  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law  did  much  to  unglue  the  eyes  of 
237 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

men,  and  now  the  Nebraska  Bill  leaves  us 
staring.  The  Anti-slavery  Society  will  add 
many  members  this  year.  The  Whig  Party 
will  join  it :  the  Democrats  will  join  it. 
The  population  of  the  Free  States  will  join 
it.  I  doubt  not,  at  last,  the  Slave  States 
will  join  it.  But  be  that  sooner  or  later 
and  whoever  comes  or  stays  away,  I  hope 
we  have  reached  the  end  of  our  unbelief, 
have  come  to  a  belief  that  there  is  a  divine 
Providence  in  the  world,  which  will  not 
save  us  but  through  our  own  cooperation." 
Happy  Emerson,  who  has  lived  to  be  so 
moved!  Now  what  is  it  that  has  brought 
Emerson  to  this  pass?  It  is  Daniel  Web 
ster's  defection.  Webster's  defection  was 
like  the  falling  of  a  mighty  tower  that 
jarred  whole  classes  and  categories  of  men 
into  an  understanding  of  the  Slave  Power. 
It  did  what  neither  Lovejoy's  murder,  nor 
the  Annexation  of  Texas  was  able  to  do: 
—  it  waked  up  "  the  better  element."  To 
this  group,  the  better  element,  Emerson  be 
longed  by  education  and  tradition.  He 
crossed  the  Jordan  along  with  the  rest  of 
his  caste.  This  was  just  twenty-five  years 
after  Garrison's  discovery  of  Immediate 
Emancipation:  for  these  things  were  hid 
den  from  the  wise  and  prudent  and  were 
238 


GARRISON    AND    EMERSON 

revealed  unto  babes.  The  Abolitionists  had 
been  studying  Daniel  Webster  for  fifteen 
years.  They  had  seen  the  menace  in  sticks 
and  straws;  Emerson  sees  it  in  the  earth 
quake.  They  had  then  left  their  desks  and 
hearths  as  he  does  now,  and  had  talked  on 
street  corners  to  any  one  who  would  listen 
about  "  slavery, —  slavery,  slavery !  " 

Now  it  seems  to  me  clear  that  Emerson 
had,  from  the  beginning,  been  dealing  with 
souls  in  slavery.  This  was  the  vision  he 
saw,  a  vision  which  was  consequent  upon 
the  Slave  Epoch,  a  vision  of  moral  slavery. 
And  the  man  of  Emerson's  imagination, 
who  is  to  set  free  these  slaves  is  Emerson 
himself.  This  Overman  is  certainly  a 
beautiful  person.  He  does  suggest  truths, 
—  this  Apollo-like  person  of  Emerson's, — 
he  is  valuable  and  he  is  beautiful.  All  of 
Emerson's  abstractions  and  summaries  of 
moral  idea  bear  somewhat  the  same  sort  of 
relation  to  the  real  world  that  this  Overman 
bears  to  Garrison.  They  are  spirit-pictures, 
drawn  from  the  life,  a  life  never  fully  un 
derstood  in  its  throb  and  passion;  yet  the 
pictures  are  given  with  such  accuracy,  such 
nobility,  such  power,  that  they  speak  for 
ever.  They  are  the  artistic  outcome  of  our 
Anti-slavery  period.  Garrison  set  a  great 
239 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

brazen  trumpet  to  his  lips  and  blew;  and 
the  walls  of  Jericho  fell.  Garrison  dies, 
and  his  trumpet  sounds  no  more.  Never 
theless,  the  small,  inner,  silver  trumpet  of 
Emerson  caught  and  sounded  the  same 
note;  and  it  continues  to  sound  the  note, 
shaking  down  the  walls  of  inner  Jerichoes 
in  men  of  later  and  ever  later  generations. 


240 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE: 
SUMMARY 

IN  every  great  fluctuation  that  takes  place 
in  human  society, — 'whether  it  be  a  moral, 
a  political,  or  even  an  industrial  phenome 
non, —  force  converges  upon  some  one  man, 
and  makes  him  the  metaphysical  center  and 
thought-focus  of  the  movement.     The  man 
is  always  a  little  metamorphosed  by  his  of 
fice,  a  little  deified  by  it.     He  is  endued  with 
supernatural  sagacity,  or  piety,  or  resiliency. 
He  is  fed  with  artificial  life,  through  the 
fact  that  thousands  of  men  are  sustaining 
him  by  their  attention  and  in  their  hope. 
Thus  in  1858,  Lincoln  suddenly  became  the 
great     general-agent     of     political     Anti- 
slavery  in  America;  because  his  brain  was 
exactly  fitted  for  this  work,  which  deified 
him  quite  rapidly.     So  of  a  hundred  other 
cases    of    deification    or    demonization :  — 
leaders  seem  to  be  grabbed,  used  and  flung 
aside  by  immaterial  and  pitiless  currents  of 
force,  which  had  as  lief  destroy  as  benefit 
their     darlings.     Witness    the    career     of 

Stephen  A.  Douglas. 

241 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

Garrison  was  the  leader  of  Abolition 
from  its  inception  to  its  triumph.  His 
genius,  and  his  activity  kept  it  a  unity,  de 
spite  the  incessant  tearing  and  crumbling 
that  were  the  normal  accompaniment  of  its 
spreading  influence.  "  I  have  never  met  the 
man  or  woman,"  said  Wendell  Phillips  in 
1865,  "  who  had  struck  any  effectual  blow 
at  the  slave  system  in  this  country,  whose 
action  was  not  born  out  of  the  heart  and 
conscience  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison.'* 
There  is  a  certain  verbal  exaggeration  in 
Phillips'  statement;  but  the  idea  conveyed 
is  true.  Garrison's  preeminence  is  incon 
testable.  In  agitation,  as  elsewhere,  the 
great  man  eats  up  the  little  man ;  he  sets  the 
clock  in  the  little  man's  bosom  by  his  own 
chronometer, —  or  rather,  all  this  is  done 
for  both  of  them  by  the  stress  of  the  times. 
There  never  was  a  leader  of  men  more 
completely  consumed  by  his  mission  than 
Garrison.  His  life  was  sucked  up  into  An 
ti-slavery.  He  had  no  attention  for  other 
things.  How  he  obtained  food  and  lodg 
ing  for  his  family  during  all  these  years  is 
a  mystery.  From  time  to  time,  it  seems, 
his  friends  would  relieve  his  wants,  or  pay 
a  doctor's  bill.  He  was  supported  by  his 
Cause:  the  benevolence  which  he  generated 
242 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE 

fed  him.  At  the  close  of  the  war  Garrison 
occupied  a  position  of  great  eminence ;  and 
he  could  have  cut  a  figure  in  public  had  he 
wished  it.  For,  although  the  Abolitionists 
and  Lincoln's  Administration  found  some 
difficulty  in  coming  to  understand  each 
other  at  the  outset,  they  were  in  moral 
union  before  long;  and  they  fought  the  war 
through  together.  "  It  was  my  privilege 
once,  and  once  only,  to  talk  with  Abraham 
Lincoln,  at  Petersburg,  Va.,  April  6,  1865," 
says  Daniel  H.  Chamberlain.  "  His  face, 
his  figure,  his  attitudes,  his  words,  form  the 
most  remarkable  picture  in  my  memory,  and 
will,  while  memory  lasts.  I  spoke  to  him 
of  the  country's  gratitude  for  his  great  de 
liverance  of  the  slaves.  His  sad  face 
beamed  for  a  moment  with  happiness  as  he 
answered  in  exact  substance,  and  very 
nearly  in  words :  '  I  have  been  only  an  in 
strument.  The  logic  and  moral  power  of 
Garrison,  and  the  Anti-slavery  people  of 
the  country  and  the  army,  have  done  all/  ' 
Garrison  had  no  worldly  ambition;  he 
even  declined  to  assist  Governor  Andrew 
with  political  advice  in  the  days  of  the  tri 
umph  of  Abolition  at  the  close  of  the  war. 
He  neglected  and  refused  to  /write  his  own 
memoirs  though  offered  large  sums  of 
243 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

money  to  do  so.  He  sank  into  private  life 
as  easily  as  if  he  had  truly  been  the  benevo 
lent,  self-educated  clockmaker  of  a  Pick 
wickian  kind,  whose  type  he  physically  re 
sembled.  The  storm  which  had  engen 
dered  this  dragon  passed  over,  and  left  be 
hind  it  a  placid  old  man. 

We  must  now  revert  to  certain  anti- 
bellum  doings  of  the  Abolitionists  which 
had  a  profound  influence  upon  the  diplo 
matic  history  of  the  country  during  the 
war.  While  the  demoniac  Garrison  was,  in 
1833,  stirring  his  American  caldron  with 
his  right  hand,  he  reached  over  with  his 
left  and  set  a-going  another  vessel  in  Eng 
land,  which  was  destined  to  be  of  enormous 
importance  to  this  country.  Garrison 
made  five  journeys  to  England,  namely  in 
1833,  1840,  1846  and  1867,  and  1877.  In 
the  first,  he  clasped  hands  with  all  the 
philanthropists  in  England  who  were,  at 
that  time,  assembled  to  witness  the  final  tri 
umph  of  the  law  abolishing  Slavery  in  the 
West  Indies.  His  immediate  object  in  this 
journey  was  to  unmask  the  American  Col 
onization  Society  before  the  British  public, 
and  to  bring  the  non-conformist  conscience 
of  England  into  true  relations  with  Ameri 
can  Abolition.  He  visited  the  venerable 
244 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE 

Clarkson,  he  met  Wilberforce,  Zachary 
Macaulay,  Samuel  Gurney,  Thomas  Fowell 
Buxton,  and  many  other  men  and  women  of 
this  kind.  At  the  suggestion  of  Daniel 
O'Connell  he  held  a  meeting  in  Exeter  Hall, 
where  O'Connell  spoke.  Garrison  was  at 
one  with  these  warm-hearted  people  in  Eng 
land  as  water  is  at  one  with  water.  They 
loved  him;  they  doted  on  him,  and  he  on 
them. 

As  we  have  seen,  George  Thompson  came 
to  America  in  1835,  as  an  apostle  to  the 
Abolition  Cause.  Harriet  Martineau  came 
as  a  traveler  in  the  same  year.  By  her 
writings,  and  especially  by  her  "  Martyr 
Age  in  America,"  she  explained  to  the  Eng 
lish  mind  the  Anti-slavery  situation  in  this 
country.  After  the  year  1835  there  existed 
a  bond  between  the  philanthropists  of  Eng 
land  and  of  America.  Constant  inter 
course,  the  sending  of  money  and  articles 
from  England  to  the  Cause  in  America,  and 
an  affectionate  personal  correspondence  be 
tween  the  most  unselfish  classes  in  each  coun 
try,  led  to  the  consolidation  of  a  sort  of 
Anglo-Saxon  alliance  of  the  only  desirable 
kind, — an  alliance  between  loving  and  pub 
lic-spirited  persons  in  each  country.  As  the 
outcome  of  this  international  union,  which 
345 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

was  inaugurated  in  1833,  a  spiritual  alliance 
of  private  persons  succeeded  thirty  years 
later  in  controlling  the  diplomatic  relations 
between  the  two  countries  and  in  averting 
war.  It  was,  perhaps,  the  first  time  in  his 
tory  that  such  a  thing  could  have  occurred; 
and  the  incident  shows  us  that  the  influence 
of  private  morality  upon  world  politics  is 
by  no  means  imperceptible. 

In  1840  a  good  many  of  the  Abolitionists 
went  to  England  to  attend  a  World's  Con 
vention,  and  to  renew  their  acquaintance 
with  O'Connell,  Buxton,  Elizabeth  Fry,  the 
Howetts,  Elizabeth  Pease  and  others.  The 
later  visit  of  Garrison  to  England  in  1846, 
was  due  to  a  picturesque  episode  in  Anti- 
slavery  history.  A  free  church  in  Scotland 
had  accepted  money  subscribed  by  slave 
holders  in  Charleston;  and  Edinburgh  be 
came  for  a  few  weeks  the  focus  of  Anti- 
slavery  agitation.  "  Send  back  the  money  " 
was  placarded  upon  the  streets,  while  Eng 
lish  and  American  Abolitionists  flocked  to 
the  fray.  Garrison  took  this  occasion  to  go 
to  London  and  attend  a  World's  Temperance 
Convention,  then  in  session  at  the  London 
Literary  Institute.  Immediately  thereafter 
he  organized  an  Anti-slavery  League,  and 
held  "  a  real  old-fashioned  Anti-slavery 
246 


FOREIGN   INFLUENCE 

meeting/*  the  first  that  had  ever  been  held 
in  London.  The  astonishing  freedom  with 
which  he  dealt  out  blows  and  caresses  to 
the  British  public,  the  perfectly  popular, 
jocular,  boisterous  tone  of  his  speech  on 
this  occasion  reminds  one  of  Luther,  and 
shows  a  new  side  to  Garrison's  powers. 
His  success  with  the  public  was  great. 
Now  it  happened  that  there  was  still  an 
other  World's  Conference  going  on  in  Lon 
don  at  that  time,  namely  a  meeting  of  the 
Evangelical  Alliance,  which  was  a  union  of 
protestant  clergy  from  various  parts  of  the 
world.  Garrison  and  Thompson  took,  of 
course,  no  share  in  the  deliberations  of  these 
clergymen,  but  watched  their  proceedings 
with  interest.  The  slave  question  was  al 
ready  burning  hotly  in  the  Alliance.  The 
contested  point  was  whether  slaveholders 
were  to  be  admitted  to  fellowship.  After 
much  wrangling  and  reference  to  commit 
tees,  etc.,  the  Alliance  decided  for  the  ad 
mission  of  slaveholders.  Imagine  the  state 
of  mind  of  Thompson  and  Garrison! 
They  instantly  called  a  meeting  at  Exeter 
Hall  under  the  auspices  of  their  own  new 
born  League:  and  they  proceeded  to  de 
nounce  the  Evangelical  Alliance, —  yes,  they 
denounced  it  out  of  existence, —  to  the  great 
247 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

encouragement  of  the  whole  Abolition 
movement  in  America  and  elsewhere.  This 
procedure  occupied  but  a  few  days,  and 
shows  how  much  an  active  man  can  do,  even 
upon  a  foreign  soil,  when  he  is  dealing  with 
matters  peculiarly  within  his  own  province 
of  understanding. 

Garrison's  personal  relations  with  the 
British  philanthropists  can  best  be  under 
stood  by  reflecting  upon  his  social  isolation 
in  America  and  upon  the  natural  warmth  of 
temperament  in  himself  and  in  these  Eng 
lish  friends.  "  I  did  not  hear  without  great 
emotion  that  you  are  returned  to  England, 
and  I  look  forward  with  great  happiness  to 
meeting  you  in  these  better  times,"  writes 
the  Duchess  of  Sutherland  in  1867.  Har 
riet  Martineau  wrote  just  before  her  death 
in  1876:  "I  can  say  no  more.  My  de 
parture  is  evidently  near,  and  I  hold  the  pen 
with  difficulty.  Accept  the  sympathy  and 
reverent  blessing  of  your  old  friend,  Har 
riet  Martineau." 

"  I  have  watched  his  career  with  no  com 
mon  interest,  even  when  I  was  too  young  to 
take  much  part  in  public  affairs ;  and  I  have 
kept  within  my  heart  his  name  and  the 
names  of  those  who  have  been  associated 
with  him  in  every  step  he  has  taken."  It 
248 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE 

is  John  Bright  who  spoke  thus,  at  the  great 
Garrison  banquet  given  in  London  in  1867. 
The  voice  of  Bright  here  spoke  for  that 
whole  world  of  liberal  sentiment  in  Eng 
land  which  first  rose  to  power  through  the 
passage  of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  It 
spoke  for  Glasgow  and  Edinborough,  for 
Lancashire  and  Yorkshire, —  for  the  new 
Burgherdom  which  came  into  the  world  her 
alding  religious  freedom,  popular  education, 
and  the  protection  of  the  humbler  classes. 

Garrison  was  better  known  to  the  work 
ing  classes  in  Great  Britain  than  in  his  own 
country.  "  During  my  visit  to  England," 
said  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  speaking  in 
1863,  "  ^  was  my  privilege  to  address,  in 
various  places,  very  large  audiences,  and  I 
never  made  mention  of  the  names  of  any 
of  those  men  whom  you  most  revere  and 
love,  without  calling  down  the  wildest  dem 
onstrations  of  popular  enthusiasm.  I  never 
mentioned  the  names  of  Mr.  Phillips  or  Mr. 
Garrison,  that  it  did  not  call  forth  a  storm 
of  approbation." 

It  was  through  all  this  intercourse  be 
tween  the  Abolitionists  and  the  liberals  of 
England  that  there  grew  up  that  under 
standing  which  the  middle  classes  of  Eng 
land  possessed  as  to  the  nature  of  the  Amer- 
249 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

ican  struggle  in  1860  to  1865;  and  which 
alone  averted  the  recognition  of  the  South 
ern  Confederacy  by  the  British  Govern 
ment.  In  reading  the  life  of  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  it  has  always  been  a  sur 
prise  to  me  to  find  how  well  informed  the 
cotton  spinners,  operatives,  and  small 
tradesmen  of  England  were  upon  the  very 
point  which  the  Governing  classes  were  so 
unwilling  to  understand.  The  story  of  the 
support  given  to  the  Northern  cause  by  the 
cotton-spinners  of  Lancashire,  who  were  be 
ing  starved  to  death  by  the  blockade  of  our 
Southern  ports,  is  among  the  most  moving 
stories  in  history.  They  could  not  be  in 
duced  to  protest  or  to  ask  their  own  Govern 
ment  for  relief  against  that  blockade. 
They  would  not  take  sides  against  the 
United  States  Government  whose  action 
was  crushing  them,  because  that  Govern 
ment  stood  for  the  freedom  of  the  slave. 
The  tale  resembles  the  story  of  some  siege 
at  which  not  merely  the  safety  of  a  city, 
but  the  fate  of  all  humanity  is  at  stake. 
These  humble  creatures  saved  us.  It  was 
due  to  their  fortitude  that  Great  Britain  did 
not  openly  recognize  the  Confederacy. 
Had  the  masses  of  England  sustained  the 
official  classes  in  regard  to  the  American 
250 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE 

question,  some  sort  of  intervention  by  Eng 
land  in  American  affairs  would  in  all  prob 
ability  have  followed. 

The  Englishmen  whose  influence  edu 
cated  and  sustained  the  working  classes 
upon  this  whole  matter  were  John  Stuart 
Mill,  John  Bright,  Richard  Cobden,  Lord 
Houghton,  William  E.  Forster,  George 
Thompson,  Goldwin  Smith,  Justin  Mc 
Carthy,  Thomas  Hughes,  Herbert  Spencer, 
Professor  J.  E.  Cairnes, —  as  well  as  the 
Gurneys,  Buxtons,  Webbs,  and  Clarksons 
of  the  previous  generation:  that  is  to  say 
they  were  the  heart  and  conscience  of  Eng 
land  of  which  Garrison  had  found  himself 
to  be  a  part  in  the  early  days,  and  by  which 
the  whole  Anti-slavery  movement  had  been 
comprehendingly  followed  during  thirty 
years.  The  lower  classes  in  England  saw 
that  the  battle  raging  in  America  was  their 
own  battle,  and  that  upon  the  maintenance 
of  the  cause  of  free  labor  the  progress  of 
popular  institutions  all  over  the  world 
largely  depended. 

When  Garrison  visited  England  in  1867 
he  was  greeted  as  the  Giant  of  an  Idea 
ought  to  be  greeted.  Public  receptions  and 
lunches  were  given  in  his  honor  in  London, 
Manchester,  Newcastle,  Edinburgh,  and 
251 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

Glasgow;  and  many  names  of  note  were  to 
be  found  subscribed  under  words  of  wel 
come.  Charles  Darwin  wrote,  twelve  years 
later,  to  young  Garrison :  "  Thank  you  for 
the  memorials  of  Garrison,  a  name  to  be  for 
ever  revered."  I  would  not  cite  the  fetes 
and  ovations  given  to  Garrison  in  London 
in  1867  as  proving  more  than  they  do  prove. 
We  ought  to  examine  the  list  of  guests  at 
the  banquets  and  read  the  current  newspaper 
editorials  by  the  light  of  the  events  of  that 
day,  before  deciding  that  Garrison's  virtue 
was  alone  responsible  for  all  this  enthusi 
asm.  I  believe  that  Great  Britain  seized 
upon  the  London  Banquet  to  Garrison  as 
an  opportunity  for  making  a  sort  of  amende 
for  her  unfriendly  conduct  during  our  cri 
sis;  and  that  persons  attended  this  break 
fast  in  1867  who  would  not  have  been  found 
at  such  a  celebration  if  it  had  occurred  in 
June,  1863.  But  whatever  may  have  been 
the  intentions  of  the  Englishmen  who,  in 
1867,  gave  Garrison  a  banquet,  they  did 
right  to  honor  him;  and  their  action  gives 
the  cue  to  posterity.  It  was  Garrison  who 
saved  this  nation.  In  his  youth  he  gave  us 
the  issue  through  which  alone  salvation 
could  come;  and  by  his  life  he  created  the 
spirit  through  which  that  issue  triumphed. 
252 


FOREIGN   INFLUENCE 

When  the  strands  of  this  great  web  are 
brought  together,  they  are  seen  to  be  as 
light  as  gossamer:  the  whole  expanding 
Cosmos  of  Slavery  may  be  drawn  back 
ward  through  a  gold  ring.  Slavery  in  the 
North  American  Colonies  was  an  outcome 
of  that  geographical  remoteness  which  has 
so  much  hampered  our  progress.  Slavery 
was  a  form  of  outrage  which  could  linger  on 
in  outlying  corners  of  the  globe,  long  after 
it  had  become  impossible  in  the  centers  of 
Western  civilization.  It  had  no  legal  in 
ception  in  our  Colonies :  it  was  older  than 
law.  But  it  grew  with  our  growth.  The 
arrangement  between  the  Colonies  which 
goes  by  the  name  of  the  "  New  England 
Confederation  of  1643  "  contained  a  clause 
for  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves.  Be 
fore  the  year  1862  there  was  never  a  mo 
ment  in  our  history  when  slavery  could  have 
been  abolished  by  the  popular  will.  The 
United  States  Constitution  of  1789  could 
never  have  been  adopted  by  the  Southern 
States  had  it  not  contained  clauses  protect 
ing  slavery.  Slavery  was  in  the  blood  of 
our  people.  During  the  thirty  years,  from 
1830  to  1860,  while  the  system  was  being 
driven  out  of  the  blood  of  our  people 
through  the  power  of  the  New  Testament, 
253 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

there  grew  up  a  natural  illusion,  that  the 
whole  matter  was  one  of  municipal  law. 
In  reality  the  matter  was  one  of  influence, 
in  which  law  only  played  a  part. 

The  American  temperament  had  thus 
been  under  the  harrow  of  iniquity  for  two 
hundred  years.  During  all  this  time 
slavery  had  been  commercially  an  error,  in 
tellectually  a  blight,  in  every  social  aspect 
a  poison.  The  toxin  of  it  engendered  in 
the  Southerner  that  subtle  quality,  known 
and  feared  by  the  Greeks, —  an  un-awed  self- 
will.  This  quality  is  a  mere  inability  to 
give  way,  and  shows  that  the  inner  will  of 
the  man  is  closed  to  the  great  creative  force 
of  the  universe.  If  he  cannot  let  this  force 
in,  he  will  be  destroyed  by  it.  Nature  con 
spires  against  him;  humanity  joins  hands 
against  him.  His  fall  is  certain. 

The  toxin  of  slavery  engendered  also  in 
the  Northerner  the  correlative  sin  to  self- 
will,  namely,  a  mean  submission.  The 
Southerner  could  not  give  way:  he  did  not 
know  how  to  yield.  The  Northerner  could 
not  stand  fast:  he  always  yielded.  If  you 
subtract  the  slave,  who  stands  between  these 
two  samples  of  damaged  temperament,  you 
will  still  have  a  symbol  of  the  institution  of 
slavery  in  these  two  divergent  attitudes  of 
254 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE 

degradation.  Do  not  seek  for  the  fault  in 
conventions  or  in  Constitutions.  There  is 
no  fault:  there  is  only  a  moral  situation, 
having  a  geographical  origin. 

During  all  this  time  the  stars  were  fight 
ing  against  slavery.  They  fought  behind 
clouds  and  darkly  for  two  hundred  years; 
and  at  last  their  influence  began  to  develop 
visible  symptoms  of  cure.  A  very  small  part 
of  life  or  history  is  ever  visible,  and  it  is 
only  by  inference  that  we  know  what  pow 
ers  have  been  at  work;  but  in  1829  it  is 
plain  that  some  terrible  drug  is  in  operation 
in  America.  Whether  this  hot  liquid  was 
first  born  in  the  vitals  of  the  slave  we  do 
not  know.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  origin 
of  it  must  have  been  in  the  slave  himself; 
and  that  it  was  mystically  transmitted  to 
the  Abolitionist,  in  whom  it  appeared  as 
pity.  We  know  that  the  drops  of  this  pity 
had  a  peculiar,  stimulating  power  on  the 
earth, —  a  dynamic,  critical  power,  a  sort 
of  prison-piercing  faculty,  which  sent 
voltages  of  electrical  shock  through  human 
ity.  It  is  plain  that  all  this  conductivity 
to  the  ideas  of  Abolition  was  a  part  of 
Abolition.  The  sensitiveness  of  the  South 
to  criticism  was  also  a  part  of  Abolition. 

There  began,  therefore,  in  about  1830,  a 
255 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

course  of  shuttling  passion,  which  seems 
ever  to  repeat  itself  and  to  run  upon  a  cir 
cuit.  A  wave  of  criticism  from  the  North 
arouses  violent  opposition  at  the  South :  this 
awakens  the  North  to  new  criticism.  As 
the  result  of  each  reaction  the  South  loses 
a  little  and  the  North  gains  a  little.  Now 
the  relative  numbers  and  resources  of  the 
North  were,  during  all  this  time,  increasing 
so  rapidly  that  nothing  but  hypnotism  could 
keep  her  in  subjection  to  the  Slave  Power. 
And  the  days  of  hypnotism  were  plainly  at 
an  end ;  the  days  of  shock  and  question  were 
come.  Whatever  the  South  did,  turned  out 
to  be  shocking,  and  to  be  mistaken.  What 
ever  the  South  did,  returned  to  plague  the 
inventor.  The  Missouri  Compromise  of 
1820  was  a  Southern  victory  and  jarred 
upon  the  Northern  conscience  a  little. 
Nine  years  thereafter  arises  Abolition. 
The  offer  of  a  reward  for  Garrison  by  the 
State  of  Georgia  in  1831  weakened  the 
South ;  the  elaborate  attempts  to  suppress 
the  Abolitionists  in  1835  weakened  the 
South;  the  Annexation  of  Texas  weakened 
her.  The  Fugitive  Slave  Law  in  1850,  the 
Repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  in  1854, 
the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  the  invasion  of 
Kansas  by  the  Border  Ruffians,  the  Dred 
256 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE 

Scott  Decision, —  each  one  of  these  things, 
though  apparently  a  victory,  proved  in  the 
end  to  be  a  boomerang,  which  operated  to 
weaken  the  South  and  to  awaken  the  North. 
On  the  other  hand  the  North  seemed  to  be 
protected  from  the  consequences  of  moral 
error.  The  greatest  illustration  of  this  is 
the  case  of  John  Brown,  whose  crimes  were 
at  first  not  credited,  and  later  were  sanctified 
by  contemporary  Northern  opinion. 

Curiously  enough,  the  political  control  of 
the  South  went  on  growing  stronger  and 
stronger  while  the  basis  for  this  control, — 
its  hold  on  the  Northern  imagination, — 
was  growing  weaker  and  weaker.  In  other 
words,  the  Southern  leaders  always  won: 
their  cause  always  lost.  Some  Nemesis 
was  working  out.  The  mecaniqiie  of  each 
successive  step  in  the  process  was  always  the 
same.  The  weapon  of  the  South  was  her 
threat  of  disunion.  This  threat  seems  to 
have  had  the  effect  of  a  spell  upon  our 
Northern  ancestors.  Disunion  was  in  their 
opinion  too  horrible  to  be  named,  and  much 
too  terrible  to  be  executed.  The  mere 
thought  of  it  shattered  Northern  nerves. 
A  world  without  the  United  States  Consti 
tution  seemed  to  Northern  men  like  a  world 
before  God's  arrival, —  chaos  come  again. 
257 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

It  was  this  threat  of  disunion  that  carried 
the  Missouri  Compromise  in  1820,  gave  the 
moral  victory  to  the  Nullifiers  in  1832,  car 
ried  the  Compromise  measures  of  1850,  re 
pealed  the  Missouri  Compromise  in  1854, 
elected  Buchanan  in  1856,  and  ruled  the 
fortunes  of  the  Republic  in  collateral  mat 
ters  between  these  crises. 

The  North  was  so  accustomed  to  knuck 
ling  under  at  the  sound  of  that  threat  that 
when  Secession  actually  took  place  in  1860, 
. —  when  the  worst  had  happened  and  the 
Union  was  irretrievably  shattered, — -the 
North  begged  for  more  compromises:  it 
proposed  to  woo  the  South  back  through 
new  concessions.  It  offered  another  Fugi 
tive  Slave  Law  which  should  be  embodied 
in  the  Constitution.  The  triumphant  Re 
publican  Party  seems  to  have  been  stunned, 
and  could  not  believe  that  the  long- 
dreamed-of  catastrophe  had  actually  oc 
curred.  It  will  be  observed  that  both  North 
and  South  upon  this  occasion  merely  played 
their  stock  parts.  The  South,  through  the 
habit  of  self-will,  seceded.  The  North, 
through  the  tradition  of  self-abasement, 
begged  her  to  come  back. 

Then  occurred  a  thing  which  no  one  ex 
pected.     The  submerged  courage,  the  abased 
258 


FOREIGN    INFLUENCE 

self-assertion  of  the  Northern  people  broke 
suddenly  into  expression.  Fort  Sumpter 
was  fired  on,  and  every  one  of  twenty  mil 
lion  people  received  a  shock  that  gave  him 
a  new  kind  of  an  organ  for  a  heart.  The 
dramatic  nature  of  this  climax  was  greatly 
enhanced  by  the  slow  manner  of  its  coming 
on,  by  the  dreadful  waiting  of  the  previous 
months,  by  the  cowardice  and  inefficiency  of 
the  politicians,  and  by  the  dumbness  of  all 
the  oracles.  Garrison,  at  this  juncture,  is 
as  empty  as  the  prophets  of  Baal :  he  knows 
nothing.  Earth's  remedies  have  failed. 
No  one  is  abreast  of  the  situation.  Lincoln 
only  waits.  At  this  moment,  when  the  ca 
tastrophe  is  in  the  sky  and  the  thud  of  Fate's 
footsteps  can  be  heard,  there  occurred  that 
thing  which  Herndon  had  spoken  of  in  a 
prophetic  letter  one  year  earlier.  Hern 
don  wrote  his  last  letter  to  Theodore  Parker 
on  December  15,  1859.  "The  Republicans 
in  Congress,"  he  says,  "  are  grinding  off  the 
flesh  from  their  kneecaps,  attempting  to  con 
vince  the  South  that  we  are  cowards.  We 
are  cowards,  that  is,  our  representatives  are. 
.  The  South  is  now  catechising  the 
North.  To  this  question,  '  What  is  the  true 
end  of  man? '  it  stands  and  shiveringly  an 
swers,  '  The  chief  end  of  man  is  to  support 
259 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

the  nigger  institutions,  and  to  apologize  to 
despots.'  The  Senators  are  all  on  their 
knees.  So  are  the  Representatives.  Let 
them  shrive  themselves  there,  and  mankind 
will  avenge  the  humiliation  in  the  future. 
This  is  God's  constant  mode  of  operation. 
The  race  will  pull  the  trigger  which  the  in 
dividual  refused  to  touch.  God  will  cry  to 
the  race  '  Fire  '  and  it  will  fire." 

Never  did  the  calculating  human  intellect 
more  completely  break  down  than  in  the 
whole  legal  history  of  America.  Never  did 
so  much  ability  prove  so  impotent  to  under 
stand  or  to  assist  a  social  development.  Sal 
vation  came  in  spite  of  all  men, —  through 
the  invisible.  Courage  came  back  with  the 
war; — a  certain  great,  gross  courage, — 
mixed  with  carnage  and  barbarity  as  the 
courage  of  war  ever  must  be, —  yet  still 
courage.  This  was  the  precious  part  of  the 
war;  for  this  courage  was  but  a  sample 
thread  of  a  new  kind  of  life  which  trusts 
generous  feelings,  relies  upon  the  unseen, 
is  in  union  with  the  unconscious  operations 
of  the  spirit. 


260 


EPILOGUE 

The  harvest  is  past,  the  summer  is  ended  and  we 
are  not  saved. — Jeremiah  8 :  20. 


EPILOGUE 

THE  Anti-slavery  epoch  presents  a  perfect 
example  of  the  rise,  progress,  and  victory  of 
a  moral  cause.  This  cause  was  so  obvious,  so 
inevitable,  its  roots  were  so  deep  in  human 
nature  and  in  history,  that  its  victory  was 
assured  from  the  beginning.  In  studying 
it,  all  our  wonder  and  all  our  attention  may 
be  reserved  for  the  manner  of  its  rise,  the 
form  of  its  advance,  and  the  mode  of  its  vic 
tory. 

Historians  are  apt  to  apportion  praise  and 
blame  to  the  Abolitionists,  to  the  Southern 
leaders,  to  the  Republican  Party,  to  the  gen 
erals  during  the  war,  to  the  troops  upon  one 
side  or  the  other  in  the  terrible  conflict.  But 
such  appraisements  are  either  the  aftermath 
of  partisan  feeling,  or  they  are  the  judg 
ments  of  men  who  have  not  realized  the  pro 
fundity  and  the  complexity  of  the  whole 
movement, —  the  inevitability  not  only  of 
the  outcome,  but  of  the  process.  That  Gar 
rison  should  have  disapproved  of  the  entry 
of  Abolition  into  party  politics,  and  that  he 
should  have  raved  like  a  hen  upon  the  river 
263 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

bank  when  he  saw  the  ducklings  he  had 
hatched  rush  into  political  waters;  that  the 
great  intellect  of  Calhoun  should  have  been 
driven  forward  by  a  suicidal  logic  into 
theories  that  were  at  war  with  the  world's 
whole  inheritance  of  truth;  that  Webster 
should  have  been  now  right,  now  wrong,  or 
the  Supreme  Court  now  enlightened  by  a 
flickering  compassion  or  again  overshad 
owed  by  the  Spirit  of  Crime;  —  such  facts 
as  these  are  parts  of  the  great  story,  and  can 
hardly  be  handled  or  sampled  by  themselves, 
hardly  separated,  even  for  a  moment,  from 
their  context. 

The  private  judgments  which  we  are 
tempted  to  utter  concerning  critical  phases 
or  moments  in  any  great  cycle  and  sweep  of 
destiny,  are  never  conclusive,  never  impor 
tant.  We  cannot  know  the  truth  about  any 
of  these  things.  No  one  can  be  sure  that 
Garrison  did  not  exert  greater  influence  upon 
V  practical  politics  through  his  dogma  of  non- 
resistance  than  he  could  have  done  through 
an  active  participation  in  government.  No 
one  can  state  the  precise  value  of  the  Liberty 
Party  and  the  Free  Soil  Movement ;  no  one 
can  weigh  the  influence  of  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin."  All  that  we  can  be  sure  of  is  the 
great  movement  itself,  which  emerges, 
264 


EPILOGUE 

winds,  coils,  progresses,  now  gleaming  and 
flashing  beneath  the  surface,  now  emerging 
above  the  surface,  of  social  and  political  life 
in  America  like  a  great  golden  serpent, — 
a  mysterious  all-pervading  influence,  su 
pernal,  mythologial, —  typifying  the  regen 
eration  of  a  people. 

The  Legend  is  so  vast,  and  moves  at  such 
a  pace  from  beginning  to  end,  that  no  two 
minds  can  agree  about  its  details.  Yet  that 
Legend  is  at  all  points  illuminated  with  the 
inner  light  of  poetry  and  religion.  It  has 
an  artistic  unity,  it  moves  like  a  very  com 
plicated  sonata;  so  that  we  who  regard  it, 
somehow  see  our  own  souls  in  it,  and  draw 
out  of  it  only  what  we  put  into  it.  The 
Anti-slavery  Legend  will  reflect  the  spiritual 
history  of  any  mind  that  looks  into  it;  it  is 
a  mirror  of  the  soul.  It  is  a  sort  of  the 
saurus  of  moral  illustration.  The  reason  is 
that  we  were  deeply  diseased;  we  were  in 
immense  danger;  we  were  covered  with 
scales,  and  our  mind  was  threatened.  Our 
whole  civilization  was  iridescent  with  the 
same  poison.  But  we  were  healed,  we 
were  saved.  And  in  the  course  of  our 
cure  every  process  and  function  of  health 
was  revealed. 

To  talk  about  the  present  is  always  diffi- 
265 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

cult.  The  past  is  easy;  but  when  in  the 
course  of  any  discussion  we  approach  the 
present,  we  approach  the  unknowable.  The 
present  can  by  no  means  be  brought  into  his 
toric  focus.  If  then  we  look  about  us  in 
America  to-day  having  in  our  minds  some 
reminiscence  of  history,  let  us  beware  of 
certitude:  let  us  touch  upon  what  we  see 
with  merely  a  hint  and  a  query.  I  will, 
then,  do  no  more  than  name  three  shapes 
which  I  see  or  seem  to  see  and  which  may 
be  thought  of  as  apparitions  or  as  passing 
fancies;  —  the  first  is  a  kind  of  specter,  the 
second  is  a  visitation  from  on  high,  the 
third  is  a  prophecy.  They  are  namely:  the 
Decay  of  Learning,  the  Rise  of  Love,  and 
the  ultimate  Revival  of  Spiritual  Interests. 
The  dying  off  of  our  older  cultivation, 
which  gives  so  much  concern  to  all  intelli 
gent  persons  in  America,  does  not  indicate 
death.  It  is  due  to  two  causes,  one  of 
them  being  the  historic,  and  withering  in 
fluence  of  isolation  and  of  commerce;  the 
other  being  the  present  preoccupation  of 
our  noblest  minds  with  philanthropic  work. 
New  life  is  at  hand,  though  it  exist  in 
forms  which  the  intellect  has  never  grasped, 
and  can  never  grasp.  Before,  however, 
speaking  of  the  future,  we  must  look  back 
266 


EPILOGUE 

once  more  upon  the  discouraging  side  of 
life  in  America — on  the  decay  of  learning. 
From  an  external  point  of  view,  the  Anti- 
slavery  epoch  can  be  very  simply  seen  as  the 
epoch  during  which  America  was  returning 
to  the  Family  of  European  nations  from  the 
exile  which  her  connection  with  slavery  had 
imposed    upon    her.     The    struggle    over 
slavery    while    it   lasted    left    her    citizens 
neither  time  nor  attention  for  general  edu 
cation.     In  1830,  we  found  ourselves  iso 
lated  and  it  took  us  thirty  years  of  work  to 
break  down  the  barriers  between  ourselves 
and  the  modern  world.     The  intellect  and 
passion  of  the  country  was  given  up  during 
this  time  to  a  terrible  conflict  between  pro 
phetic  morality  on  the  one  hand  and  the  un 
profitable   sophistries   of   law,   politics   and 
government    on    the    other.     Our    attitude 
towards  Europe  was  unintelligent;  our  ex 
perience    in    ideas    (other    than    prophetic 
ethics   and   Constitutional   Law),   was   nil. 
The   consequence   was   that   the   American 
fell  tremendously  behind  the  European  in 
general  cultivation. 

Now  the  period  after  our  return  to  social 

life, —  the  period,  namely  between  1865  and 

the  present  time, —  coincides  with  the  rise 

of  modern  commerce,  so  that  we  no  sooner 

267 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

got  free  from  one  enemy  to  the  soul  than 
we  were  fastened  upon  by  another — 'and 
that  other  the  half-brother  and  blood  rela 
tion  of  the  first.  I  will  not  try  to  analyze 
America  nor  define  her  relation  to  Europe. 
I  will  only  point  out  our  most  dreadful  de 
fects,  and  this  only  as  a  prelude  to  mention 
ing  our  hopes  of  salvation. 

I  confess  that  a  certain  hard-eyed  cold- 
hearted  look  in  the  American  sometimes 
causes  me  to  remember  that  Slavery  was  al 
ways  Commerce,  and  that  Commerce  is  to 
some  extent  always  Slavery.  Such  great 
wealth  as  has  been  created  in  America  since 
1865  would  have  hardened  the  eyes  of  any 
generation  that  looked  on  it.  We  have  in 
deed  been  born  to  calamity  in  America,  and 
our  miseries  have  come  thickly  upon  us.  If 
you  will  walk  back  across  the  whole  history 
of  the  world,  you  will  find  that  respect  for 
learning  has  never  before  fallen  so  low  as  it 
has  fallen  in  the  United  States  to-day.  If 
you  start  anywhere  in  Europe  and  trace  your 
way  back  to  ancient  Egypt,  you  will  find  no 
age  without  its  savants,  its  thinkers,  men  who 
know  something  of  the  past,  living  some 
times  in  caves  and  sometimes  in  drawing- 
rooms,  yet  always,  in  a  certain  sense,  the 
publicists  of  their  times.  These  are  the 
268 


EPILOGUE 

men  through  whom,  to  some  extent,  re 
ligion,  education,  and  the  traditions  of 
spiritual  life  are  transmitted  from  age  to 
age.  There  have  always  been  enough  of 
such  men  in  every  age  to  secure  popular  re 
spect  for  the  idea  for  which  they  stand, 
the  idea  of  continuity.  There  has  been  no 
real  break  in  European  culture.  During 
the  dark  ages  the  most  visible  and  most 
powerful  influence  upon  popular  imagina 
tion  consisted  in  the  monuments  of  a  gigan 
tic  past.  Indeed,  for  many  centuries  there 
after,  the  overwhelming  influence  of  an 
tiquity  cowed  the  world.  That  element  has 
endured  in  European  education  in  the  form 
of  a  reverence  for  the  past.  It  stands 
behind  every  man  as  a  sort  of  sounding- 
board  in  his  mind,  an  invisible  chamber  of 
consciousness  that  gives  resonance  to  his 
voice. 

If  to-day  you  fall  into  casual  conversation 
with  almost  any  European,  you  will  feel  the 
influence  of  these  vistas  of  education.  The 
man's  mind  is  inured  to  thought.  What 
you  say  to  him  is  native  to  his  soul.  He 
has  heard  something  like  it  before.  He 
knows  of  the  existence  of  the  Empire  of  the 
Intellect.  He  is  interested  in  the  spiritual 
history  of  the  world.  All  this  illumination 
269 


WILLIAM   LLOYD    GARRISON 

is  no  personal  merit  in  the  individual  you 
speak  to.  He  has  lived  near  to  the  scholar, 
the  musician,  the  painter,  the  antiquarian, 
the  philologist,  the  mathematician. 

It  happened  that  a  series  of  misfortunes 
so  widowed  America  that  we  have  all  but 
lost  the  past.  Much  baggage  was  jettisoned 
in  the  original  transit  across  the  sea, 
much  lost  during  our  colonial  and  frontier 
period,  and  finally  —  we  were  stripped 
bare  by  the  pirate  Slavery,  and  marooned 
for  seventy  years  in  a  sort  of  Babylonian 
captivity.  I  think  there  is  enough  in  all 
this  to  account  for  the  bleakness  of  Ameri 
can  life  as  contrasted  with  European  life. 
I  think  that  the  emotions  must  in  youth 
be  fed  upon  a  sort  of  pabulum  that  comes 
down  out  of  the  past, —  songs,  aspirations, 
stories,  prayers,  reverence  for  humanity, 
knowledge  of  God; — or  else  some  dread 
ful  barrenness  will  set  in  and  paralyze 
the  intellect  of  a  race.  The  question  some 
times  forces  itself  upon  me,  Is  not  the  Ger 
man  citizen  of  the  second  generation,  who 
walks  the  streets  of  New  York  to-day,  more 
truly  a  barbarian  than  his  Gothic  ancestor 
who  invaded  Europe  in  the  fourth  century 
A.  D.,  and  whose  magnificent  vernacular 
is  preserved  in  Ulfilas'  translation  of  the 
270 


EPILOGUE 

Scriptures?  In  piety,  in  knowledge  of 
poetry,  in  reverence,  the  Goth  was  more 
advanced  than  his  American  descendant. 
I  say,  the  Suabian  peasant  of  to-day  seems 
to  me  to  be  superior  to  the  American  farmer 
in  many  of  those  things  that  make  life  deep 
and  cause  society  to  endure. 

To  cut  loose,  to  cast  away,  to  destroy, 
seems  to  be  our  impulse.  We  do  not  want 
the  past.  This  awful  loss  of  all  the  terms 
of  thought,  this  beggary  of  intellect,  is 
shown  in  the  unwillingness  of  the  average 
man  in  America  to  go  to  the  bottom  of  any 
subject,  his  mental  inertia,  his  hatred  of  im 
personal  thought,  his  belief  in  labor-saving, 
his  indifference  to  truth.  The  state  of  mind 
in  which  commercial  classes  spend  their  lives 
is  not  that  of  pure,  self-sacrificing  spiritual 
perception.  The  commercial  mind  seems, 
in  its  essence,  to  be  the  natural  enemy  of 
love,  religion,  and  truth ;  and  when,  as  at  the 
present  moment  in  America,  we  have  com 
merce  dominant  in  an  era  whose  character 
istic  note  is  contempt  for  the  past,  we  can 
hardly  expect  a  picturesque,  pleasing,  or 
harmonious  social  life. 

Much  is  lost  sight  of,  much  is  forgotten 
among  us;  much  is  unknown  that  in  any 
European  country  would  be  familiar.  For 
271 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

instance,  this  very  man,  William  Lloyd  Gar 
rison,  is  almost  forgotten  among  us.  He 
lived  a  life  of  heroism  and  of  practical 
achievement;  the  beauty  of  his  whole  course 
was  extraordinary,  and  his  type  of  character 
is  very  rare.  Had  he  lived  in  Europe  he 
would  have  been  classified  at  once  among 
the  great  figures  of  his  own  generation. 
Indeed  he  was  so  classified  from  across  the 
sea.  His  character  would  have  been  prized 
thereafter  as  a  national  possession.  But  in 
America  all  that  the  educated  man  of  to-day 
knows  of  Garrison  is  that  he  was  one  who 
held  impractical  views  and  used  over-strong 
language  during  the  Anti-slavery  struggle. 

All  this  feebleness,  whose  evidences  I  have 
been  reviewing,  comes,  I  believe,  from  a 
central  deficiency  of  life  in  the  American 
people.  It  is  not  a  thing  which  can  be 
cured  in  the  college,  or  in  the  school,  or  in 
the  drawing-room;  though  the  cure  will 
show  in  all  such  places  as  fast  as  the  great 
patient  improves. 

During  the  very  epoch  (the  decade  suc 
ceeding  the  close  of  the  war)  when  our 
intellectual  blight  was  at  its  worst,  there 
began  to  appear  among  us  compassionate 
persons  founding  newsboys'  halls  in  the 
Five  Points,  prison  angels,  and  police  court 
272 


EPILOGUE 

visitors,  saints  knocking  at  the  doors  of  the 
poor, —  men  filled  with  love  and  pity.     This 
new    gospel    of    love   now    absorbs    whole 
classes    of    people    in   American   life,    and 
swallows  the  young  as  the  Crusades  once 
swallowed  them.     I  hear  schoolmasters  and 
learned  men  complain  that  their  most  bril 
liant    classical    scholars    insist    upon   doing 
settlement  work  the  moment  they  graduate. 
Why  do  the  young  people  of  both  sexes 
take   this   course?     What   planetary   influ 
ence     depletes     the     exhausted     ranks     of 
scholarship,    and    makes    traitors    of   these 
trained   minds   to   the   cause   of  learning? 
In  their  new  career  their  old  education  goes 
apparently   for  nothing.     They  themselves 
cannot  tell  you.     And  yet  they  are  justified. 
These  young  people  are  being  governed  by 
that  higher  law  which  governed  St.  Fran 
cis, —  the  law  which  he  also  knew  how  to 
obey  but  could   not  explain.     Our  young 
people   express   by   their   conduct   a   more 
potent    indictment    of   the   cultivation   and 
science  of  the  older,  dying  epoch  than  could 
be  written  with  the  pen  of  Ezekiel.     The 
age  has  nothing  in  it  that  satisfies  them: 
they    therefore    turn    away    from    it:  they 
satisfy  themselves  elsewhere.     In  so  doing 
they  create  a  new  age.     The  deeper  needs  of 
273 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

humanity  can  only  be  met  slowly.  It  re 
quired  several  hundred  years  for  the  mean 
ing  and  importance  of  St.  Francis  to  be 
come  apparent.  To  his  contemporaries  he 
seemed  to  be  a  disciple  sent  to  the  poor; 
yet  his  influence  ultimately  qualified  the  art 
and  letters,  and  tinged  the  philosophy  of 
life  of  several  centuries. 

All  these  new  saints  of  ours, —  new 
Christians,  and  loving  persons  who  crowd 
the  slums,  and  rediscover  Christ  in  them 
selves  and  in  others, —  lack  power  to  ex 
plain;  they  merely  exist.  Through  them, 
or  rather  through  the  heart  which  they  in 
fuse,  literature  and  intellect  will  return,  art 
and  mental  vigor  will  be  restored  to  us.  It 
would  seem  that  the  bowels  and  viscera  of 
society  must  be  heated  first,  and  thereafter 
in  time, —  it  may  be  a  century  or  two, —  a 
warmer  life  will  reach  the  mind.  These 
new  grubs  that  creep  out  of  the  ground, 
these  golden  bees  that  dart  by  us  in  the  sun 
shine,  going  so  directly  to  their  work  like 
camp  nurses,  are  more  perfect  creatures 
than  we  are,  in  that  they  deal  with  human 
ity  as  a  unit.  You  and  I  are  nothing  to 
them.  They  have  a  relation  to  the  whole. 
They  are  living  in  a  beam  which  we  do 
not  see,  they  are  the  servants  of  a  great 
274 


EPILOGUE 

cure  which  we  cannot  give,  and  do  not  un 
derstand. 

So  also  in  regard  to  the  Anti-slavery 
Movement,  the  importance  of  that  Move 
ment  comes  from  the  fact  that  it  meant 
piety,  truth,  and  love.  The  rest  is  illusion. 
In  a  certain  sense  the  slaves  were  freed  too 
soon.  That  short-sighted  element  in  the 
philosophy  of  Abolition,  which  saw  Slav 
ery  as  the  Antichrist  (whereas  the  spiritual 
domination  of  evil  was  the  real  Antichrist), 
ended  by  putting  Slavery  to  its  purgation 
so  quickly  and  so  convulsively  that  many 
features  and  visiting  cards  of  slavery  were 
left  behind  in  the  nervous  system  of  the 
people.  This  was  no  one's  fault:  it  was 
the  method  of  nature.  An  after-cure  was 
necessary ;  and  we  have  been  undergoing  an 
after-cure,  and  need  more  of  it. 

I  regret  the  loss  of  the  old  cultivation; 
and  yet  I  know  that  none  of  our  older  cul 
tivation  was  ever  quite  right.  The  Ameri 
can  has  never  lived  from  quite  the  right 
place  in  his  bosom.  Nevertheless  if  we 
are  but  patient  the  loss  will  be  restored  to 
us  tenfold.  We  are  living  in  the  age  of  a 
great  regeneration.  There  is  hardly  a  man 
in  whose  face  I  do  not  see  some  form  of  it. 
New  hope  is  with  us.  Very  different  is 
275 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

our  mission  from  that  of  the  Abolitionist, 
though  both  are  forms  of  the  same  power. 
Anti-slavery  was  the  narrow,  burning  gate 
of  heaven,  seen  by  a  few  men,  who  fought 
their  way  towards  it,  paying  with  their 
lives  for  every  step  in  their  progress. 
Crags  overhung  them:  society  hated  them: 
every  man  was  their  enemy.  In  our  new 
crusade  no  one  is  our  enemy.  The  spirit 
is  felt  in  all  men.  In  some,  it  moves  in  the 
heart  crying,  Abba,  Father.  Others  it 
leaves  speechless,  but  makes  their  lives 
beautiful  through  unselfish  labor.  Still 
others  it  illuminates  with  visions,  so  that 
we  see  men  and  women  who  live  like  angels, 
running  up  and  down  in  the  celestial  light, 
passing  forward  and  back  between  God  and 
man,  bringing  health  to  many.  In  other 
hearts  it  has  broken  the  old  shackles  of 
prejudice,  and  shown  to  them  the  common 
bond  that  lives  in  all  religion.  The 
churches  have  been  growing  liberal, —  for 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  Christianity. 
Other  classes  of  men  glow  with  an  enthu 
siasm  for  science  which  is  becoming  a  form 
of  worship  for  truth,  differing  chiefly  in 
name  from  religion.  It  is  as  if  a  truce 
had  been  sounded  in  that  antique  war  that 
has  raged  forever  over  creed  form  and 
276 


EPILOGUE 

scientific  theory,  and  as  if  every  one  were 
standing  in  silence,  thinking  of  the  realities 
which  lie  and  which  have  always  lain  be 
hind  the  noisy  dogmas  and  the  certified  for 
mulas  of  human  thought.  The  wrecks  of 
many  creeds  are  being  clashed  together 
like  the  cakes  of  ice  in  the  Hudson  during 
a  great  February  thaw;  while  the  strong 
river  bears  them  all  forward  in  triumph. 

Great  and  small,  learned  and  unlearned 
meet  upon  that  plane  of  common  humility 
which  is  their  only  meeting  ground.  It  is 
a  period  when  the  power  and  first-hand 
mystery  of  life  is  recognized  on  every  side, 
and  when  the  conventions  and  lies  that  dam 
and  deny  that  power  are  for  the  time  being 
widely  broken  down.  I  do  not  say  that 
the  dams  will  remain  down  forever.  Peo 
ple  are  building  at  them  all  the  time.  Trade 
interests,  personal  selfishnesses  are  indefati- 
gably  at  work  like  ants, —  contesting  every 
inch  of  the  damage,  inventing  new  dykes, 
denying  that  any  permanent  change  has 
taken  place. 

Let  us  be  glad  that  we  are  born  in  this 
age  and  within  the  swirl  and  current  of  the 
new  freedom.  Let  us  do  each  our  share 
to  leave  the  dams  down,  and  not  build 
them  up  in  our  own  bosoms;  for  it  is  in 
277 


WILLIAM   LLOYD   GARRISON 

peoples'  bosoms  that  all  these  dams  exist. 
We  must  permit  the  floods  of  life  to  run 
freely.  It  is  not  from  any  one  of  our  re 
forms,  arts,  sciences,  and  churches  but  out 
of  all  of  them  that  salvation  flows.  What 
shall  we  do  to  assist  in  this  great  process? 
What  relation  do  we  bear  to  the  move 
ment?  That  is  the  question  which  requires 
a  lifetime  for  its  answer.  Our  knowledge 
of  the  subject  changes  constantly  under  ex 
perience.  At  first  we  desire  to  help  vigor 
ously;  and  we  do  all  in  our  power  to  assist 
mankind.  As  time  goes  on,  we  perceive 
more  and  more  clearly  that  the  advancement 
of  the  world  does  not  depend  upon  us,  but 
that  we,  rather,  are  bound  up  in  it,  and  can 
command  no  foothold  of  our  own.  At  last 
we  see  that  our  very  ambitions,  desires  and 
hopes  in  the  matter  are  a  part  of  the  Su 
pernal  Machinery  moving  through  all  things, 
and  that  our  souls  can  be  satisfied  and  our 
power  exerted  only  in  so  far  as  we  are 
taken  up  into  that  original  motion,  and 
merged  in  that  primal  power.  Our  minds 
thus  dissolve  under  the  grinding  analysis  of 
life,  and  leave  behind  nothing  except  God. 
Towards  him  we  stand  and  look;  and  we, 
who  started  out  with  so  many  gifts  for  men, 
have  nothing  left  in  our  satchel  for  man 
kind  except  a  blessing. 
278 


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